Information Technology and Investments Minister Austin Gatt’s announcement that the surcharge rate and the fuel price would not shift until June of next year, following an agreement of hedging on fuel purchases, was another u-turn by the government, the Labour party’s infrastructural services spokesman, Joe Mizzi said in a statement.

The Labour Party had been urging the government for a long time to consider hedging fuel purchases. Nationalist governments, however, used to ridicule the Labour Party about this, and after 1998 even wrote off an agreement of the sort, that Labour had made.

One of the government consultants who advises Enemalta on fuel purchases, said quite recently that if a hedging agreement had been reached from 1999, Enemalta would have saved at least Lm40 million.

Mr Mizzi said it was Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi himself who said on the radio on 27 November, 2004, that hedging was a game at which Malta always lost, and declared that the government was not ready to play poker with the people’s money.

Almost three years later, in the name of the government, Minister Gatt made a u-turn, bragging at a news conference that the surcharge rate would not change until June of next year, because of fuel price hedging.

In these last years the Nationalists had not only given up on hedging, but had done nothing to implement measures of efficiency at Enemalta and neither had they done anything about the use of alternative energy. Faced with the international fuel price hikes, they instead took the easiest option, which was to burden the country with the surcharge.

Although the price of fuel would not change in the coming months, the reality was that today Lm10 gave motorists seven litres less unleaded petrol at the pump compared to four years ago, while compared to nine years ago, the same amount now gave six litres less leaded petrol and 16 litres less diesel.

In a counter-statement, the Investments Ministry said that the government’s position is clear and consistent, based on facts and costs known to all.

There is no government u-turn on the issue. What Mr Mizzi quoted was a reaction to an MLP statement that hedging could replace the surcharge.