Labour Party acting leader Charles Mangion, spokesman for parliamentary, financial and economic affairs, said Malta has in the first seven months this year lost, because of the government’s incompetence, Lm9 million in money due from the EU.

In that period, he said, the government had drawn Lm5 million from EU funds, but as a country, Malta had paid some Lm14 million to the EU. This meant that Malta had lost about Lm9 million. The financial benefits to which our country was entitled were being lost, he said.

The reason was that it was the government which had the responsibility to do the preparatory work in time and professionally so that the country would receive the money due from the EU. Where EU funds were concerned, the Nationalist government was a complete failure, Dr Mangion said.

The government was also failing where recurrent expenditure was involved. In the financial estimates for 2007, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, as Finance Minister, had promised that the government’s recurrent expenditure for this year would not exceed Lm7.4 million. In the first seven months this year, this expenditure had surpassed Lm22 million, which was about Lm15 million more than forecast in the estimates.

The government had failed in all sectors of public expenditure:

• In wages the government had aimed to reduce expenditure by Lm1 million but in the first seven months this year it had spent Lm2.3 million more;

• The government had aimed to reduce contributions to public entities by Lm6.5 million, but in the first seven months this year, the expenditure on these entities had gone up by almost Lm1 million;

• The government had calculated it would spend an additional Lm15 million this year on programmes and initiatives. But in the first seven months this year, the expenditure had gone up by over Lm18 million.

Where the public debt was concerned, the Nationalist government had failed as well. Although it had projected a rise in debt of Lm50 million over a full year, the result was that without privatisation, the public debt had gone up by almost Lm56 million in the first seven months this year.

The government would now resort to privatisation to achieve its aims.

This was a clear failure on the part of the Prime Minister’s aims. A clear explanation was needed about the failure in financial aims. The government should control its expenditure, Dr Mangion said.