Those who are crying foul over this week’s unveiling of new a fees structure at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority would do well to remember two fundamental points.

First, the fees the authority applies to development permit applications have not been changed since the Planning Authority, Mepa’s predecessor, was set up in 1993 – 17 years ago. No one could rightly argue that the rates should not change to at least reflect inflation, let alone the manifold new economic realities that have cropped up in the meantime.

The situation has clearly become unrealistic and has amounted to one in which the public, through its taxes, is effectively subsidising the cost of development, development that has, in so many cases, resulted in further ruin to the country and the swallowing up of much of its green areas over the last two decades.

Secondly, no one could rightly claim that the announcement came completely out the blue. It has been expected all year and it is, in fact, surprising that the rates were only altered this week, now more than halfway through the year.

That Mepa’s fees were to be revised upwards was, in actual fact, a budget measure announced last November. It forms part of the concept announced in the last budget, which aims to see government entities that hold the potential of generating revenue from the respective sectors in which they operate becoming self-sufficient. Along such lines was the budget announcement of a new tariff structure for Mepa permits, which are to contribute to Mepa no longer being reliant on funding from central government.

Such funding, the government spelt out this week after it was dragged over the hot coals by business bodies and the Opposition, amounted to no less than €45 million over the last five years.

The new rates, at least according to the government, are proportionate to the size and nature of the development – rates per square metre for apartments are lower than rates for villas, bungalows and penthouses.

According to a table published by the GRTU this week, the fees have been raised by up to 1,705 per cent. The figure appears shocking, but on closer inspection it transpires that that particular increase was for demolition permits, the cost of which has been raised from €116 to €1,985. Is the latter such an incredible amount that it threatens to plunge the GRTU’s property development section into recession, especially considering the overall cost of demolishing and redeveloping a site? Another huge increase, of 1,298 per cent, was in permits for extensions to commercial developments, which will now cost €453. Other increases, in the 400 per cent region, were in respect to plants and machinery permits, which now cost €570 and vending machines, now €150, while the price of vertical extensions for quarries has been raised by 319 per cent to €1,487.

While the preceding figures have, admittedly, been cherry picked to a certain extent, these are commercial applications and the new permit fees are well justified as such.

The question we should be asking is, at the end of the day, who pays for the permits. The answer is developers and, at risk of incorrectly putting all property developers in the same pigeonhole, many have had it very good, financially speaking, for the last 17 years and many others have a lot to answer for in terms of contemplating some of the developments that they have, as does Mepa itself for allowing certain developments in the first place.

Rampant development has ruined so much of the country over the last two decades – irreparable damage that can never be completely undone, once the cement has been laid.

And while permit applicants should rightly expect to now begin getting their money’s worth in terms of the speed with which permit applications are handled, there is a valid parallel argument that those fees announced this week should, in actual fact, have been higher.

Rampant development, spurred many times by bottom line greed, has ruined so much of the country over the last two decades that there is an argument for Mepa to be financed by those using its services and by those responsible for much of the eyesores at times dotting and at others completely engulfing the country.

A worthy concept would be for the additional funds Mepa receives from the new permit fees to be siphoned not into the global Mepa kitty, but rather into a dedicated fund that would go towards the other side of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s area of operations – that which safeguards the environment and the built environment from further devastation.

Reneging on gas subsidy unacceptable

The other set of new fees announced this week, those that have raised the price of gas by a further 30 per cent following a 40 per cent plus hike last summer, is completely unacceptable.

It is unacceptable because in late 2008 a pledge had been made, in Parliament – the highest institution in the land, no less – that the government was to retain its subsidy on the consumer price of gas for a full three years.

According to that promise, the price of gas should still be subsidised until the end of 2011, or just under 40 per cent lower than what it is now.

There is little doubt that the practice of subsidisation is no longer viable, not according to European Union rules, nor according to the free market ethos of this day and age.

But, on the other hand, when the retention of a subsidy is promised by a government, that promise should not be so bluntly reneged upon, especially when the subsidy involves a product on which households and businesses rely on a daily basis.

The subsidy on gas was somewhat abruptly removed last August, although the government had pledged to retain it during October 2008’s parliamentary debate on the privatisation of Enemalta’s gas operations and the transfer of land to the successful bidder to set up shop.

That night, the Opposition, quite rightly, raised the rather pertinent question of how the move would affect the price of gas, to which government representatives quickly replied that the government would be retaining its subsidisation of gas for the next three years, in order to provide for stability in its pricing.

But just over nine months after that pledge was made, the government announced it was removing the subsidy.

The issue here is not the validity of the subsidy, which the government said at the time had cost it more than €600,000 in just four months, but rather one of the government keeping its word.