What Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said when he launched the pre-budget consultation period last Wednesday must have escaped the unions – or perhaps they are waiting for the right time to protest about what seems to be a government change of plan on one of the issues that helped the Nationalist Party regain power.

Mr Fenech said that the wide-ranging income tax cuts that were promised by the Nationalist Party during the electoral campaign will need to be reviewed in the light of the wider economic scenario prevailing at the next budget’s formulation.

When Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, on the second day of the election campaign, started with what was considered to be one of the best moves the PN made by announcing that the government planned to revise the income tax bands in favour of the worker, he never mentioned that this would depend on international factors that are affecting the country’s economy.

That time, the PM gave half of the story, the nicer part, without mentioning the ifs and the buts that were linked to such a bold proposition the government was making.

It is only now that we have the full picture, with Mr Fenech saying that it is still too early for the government to commit itself to revise the income tax bands, and this largely because of the financial turmoil that has gripped the international markets due to the increase in the price of cereals and oil.

The income tax revisions listed out by Dr Gonzi before the election included an upward revision of the 15 and 25 per cent income tax bands and a reduction in the maximum 35 per cent income tax rate to 25 per cent for those earning up to e60,000 per year. These proposals had been strongly welcomed by both employers and employees as, once implemented, they would mean more money in people’s pockets.

The promised cuts would be a follow-up to the two revisions the government introduced in the last two budgets, at a time when the price of fuel and cereals was already spiralling and it was probable that it would have continued moving upwards, as in fact happened.

The effects of the international markets have been felt for the past two or three years, and yet the government still reviewed the income tax bands in favour of the worker in the two years preceding the election. Now that the legislature is still in the beginning, the government has found the excuse it needed to revise the position it had taken only three months ago.

What Mr Fenech said lays the ground for a probable change of plan, at least a delay in the implementation of the pre-election ideas the government boasted so much about. Few, if any, governments hand out the goodies in the first half of the legislature.

So it is safe to conclude, now with the benefit of hindsight, that the tax cuts that the government pledged before the election were simply an electoral ploy, one aimed to gain votes. It is probably also safe to say that if the election was still to be held, the tax bands would have been reviewed again irrespective of what is happening in the international markets.

The unions have so far remained silent on the matter, probably thinking that they will have the time to put forward their position when they hold meetings with the government as part of the consultation process leading to the publication of the pre-budget document. However, one would have expected them to immediately make public their protestations about the government’s change in position.