FRANCESCA VELLA
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday that the price monitoring agency is set to be in place by the year’s end, after the finance minister would have put forward his proposals to the Cabinet.
Replying to questions on Radio 101, Dr Gonzi insisted that the government’s intention is for the agency to monitor prices, and definitely not to issue price orders, although exceptions could be made for medicines, for instance.
The prime minister spoke about data recently issued by the National Statistics Office that shows that inflation has gone down at a rate that is six times faster than the EU average.
Inflation is still high, particularly since it went up to 2.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year, he said, but it is expected to go down further in the next few months.
Speaking about the cost of living adjustment (COLA), Dr Gonzi said it is still too early to say how much this would be.
The most important thing at the moment, he said, is to work together to safeguard jobs and generate more employment opportunities.
He referred to emails he had received from people studying IT at the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology, who asked about the fact that there is a certain amount of pressure on jobs in the IT industry.
Dr Gonzi said large countries’ economies are already showing signs of recovery from the recession, and he said confidence would hopefully soon be restored in the different sectors of the economy, including the important IT sector.
Speaking about the possibility of a reshuffle in the Cabinet of ministers, the prime minister said he is keeping his options open.
“I am not considering a reshuffle right now, but you can never totally exclude anything. I’ve given enough examples to show that I’ve taken decisions, sometimes radical, in the country’s best interest,” he said, adding that the government is devising clear policies based on the country’s potential.
On the country’s expenditure in the education sector, Dr Gonzi said the stipend system is the best investment in the young generation, encouraging them to further their studies.
He noted, however, that investment in education also involves investing in life long learning programmes. About 25,000 workers will be receiving training thanks to EU funding, he said.
Dr Gonzi repeated the finance minister’s statements that the government does not intend to introduce new taxes to make up for the lack of income from tourism this year.
Besides, he said, let’s not count our chickens before they hatch; there have been less tourist arrivals than there were last year, but the numbers are more or less on the same level of 2007, which was also a record year.
He insisted on the need to improve the overall tourism product, appealing to people to keep the country clean, since this does not only fall under the responsibility of central government and local councils.
On the European Parliament election and individual candidates’ spending during the campaign leading to the election, Dr Gonzi said there are aspects of the law that need to be clarified.
“I don’t want to be the one to pass judgement on who broke the law and who didn’t, but the law needs to be clarified. The Opposition Leader and I have written to the Speaker of the House to bring up the discussion in parliament. There are certain defects in the law that create confusion. The English and Maltese texts of the law do not match for instance.”
Speaking about the Renzo Piano plans for City Gate, the new parliament building and the opera house site, the prime minister said a number of logistical problems would have to be dealt with, such as the fact that the entrance to the capital would be a construction site for four years, so the government would have to work closely with the business community to ensure that people still go to Valletta while the project is underway.
He said a number of people from different sectors would be required to work on the project, so it would be a means of generating employment opportunities.
On the reform of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (Mepa), Dr Gonzi said he could not understand why people were critical of the fact that the policy side of things would be in the government’s remit.
“When Mepa was first set up, the original law stipulated that policy making falls in the government’s remit. At some point this changed, so all we want to do now is to change this back to how it was originally.
“At the end of the day, the government is responsible for policies. There will not be, however, interference from the government’s end in the application and decision stage of planning,” he said.