Unveiling the government’s now customary pre-budget consultative document yesterday morning, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi pledged that next year’s budget would be formulated with the interests of Maltese families at heart.

Dr Gonzi also appealed to the public and Malta’s families for feedback and their full participation in the inclusive process of finalising the 200-odd budgetary proposals encapsulated in this year’s pre-budget document titled “Families Growing Stronger’.

The raft of proposals published yesterday, Dr Gonzi said, was the result of some six months of consultations, and that 2008 would be a year in which the betterment of conditions for Maltese families will be the government’s centre of attention.

While the country would achieve the historic feat of entering the eurozone next year, the country’s economic development and securing more employment would be of the utmost importance for the government. But, above all, Dr Gonzi stressed, the considerations and advancement of the family would remain at the fore of the government’s policies.

On the issue of health care, the source of one of the country’s greatest recurrent expenditures and citizen’s concerns, according to recent surveys, Dr Gonzi announced that the inception of two major projects were imminent.

Firstly, the new Mater Dei hospital, which has been hampered by tender debacles such as those, most recently, related to the supply of an information system and cleaning services would begin admitting its first patients “in the coming weeks”.

Secondly, the long-awaited Pharmacy of Your Choice scheme, alleviating those entitled to free medicine from travelling to government health centres to have their prescription filled, would be introduced in a “matter of weeks rather than months”.

Dr Gonzi fielded a number of questions from the press, many of which were unrelated to the matter at hand and at one point chastised a journalist from an opposition media for pressing him on matters such as the Carmel Cacopardo and the Malta Environment and Planning Authority issue when, he emphasised, “We are talking about a Lm1 billion budget, nearly EUR2.5 billion as well as significant decisions for the country,” adding there was an appropriate time and place for the raising of such matters and that yesterday’s press conference was certainly not one of them.

Among the 200 measures put up for discussion and consultation in the few months leading up to Budget 2008 were measures aimed at revising the children’s allowance, new fiscal measures for part-time, self-employed and female workers, and incentives for new couples to ease the burden of property prices.

In the realm of culture, a proposal has been made for value added tax on cultural activities to be reduced from 18 per cent to five per cent, while the concept of a film fund for local productions was also floated.

New measures on animal protection as well as new programmes and incentives for alternative energies have also been tabled. Gozo is also at the centre of the group of budgetary proposals, with measures including those aimed at increasing mobility and tourism for the island.

While Budget 2007 had foreseen a halving of Malta’s departure tax levied on flights abroad, which was reduced from Lm20 to Lm10 in June, there was no such commitment yesterday.

The controversial travel tax, over which the European Commission is threatening legal action, however, appears set to remain in place. Addressing the issue, Dr Gonzi explained that the EC’s contention was not over the tax itself, which other EU countries also levy, but rather over the fact that it was discriminatory in that it only applied to travellers beginning their voyage in Malta.

As such, the government has the option of instituting such a charge on tourists – an area where, Dr Gonzi stressed, “We have to be careful”.