Prior to B-Day, a source from the Finance Ministry told the press that this would be an “election budget”. The description is not new, but for it to come from a government source certainly is. If the Ministry thought that this would be interpreted as a budget that offers only goodies, having it straight from the horse’s mouth raised the suspicion that anything unpleasant will be relegated to the finer print or just postponed to a later date.

A budget wrapped in fluff

In that sense, the more cautious were not disappointed. The very fact that this budget came presented in the densest PR wrapping ever already pointed to the possibility that this was to make up for a lack of substance. Over the years, budgets have become strictly fiscal exercises; this time, it had to be accompanied by a huge marquee set up in St George’s Square and a marketing campaign for God knows what reason. And, by the way, all paid for from the public purse. At least this time we can console ourselves that the flashy presentation is not as crude as the monikers of budgets past such as the ‘Budget tal-qawsalla’.

The employment yardstick

Mintoff once said that, ultimately, a government’s performance should be judged by how many jobs it manages to create. Fair enough. If that’s the case, the PN in office gets an unequivocal thumbs-up. Unemployment became a distant memory of a time when a Labour government would massage the embarrassing figures simply by adding the unemployed to the public payroll. In fact, it is such a distant memory that in many cases it has been conveniently forgotten.

As I will never tire of repeating, in this column and elsewhere, jobs do not “just happen”. There is no magic formula. Jobs are the result of the right framework – a framework that is not only created intelligently over the years but that must be constantly developed and adapted to changing national and international circumstances.

Now Edward Scicluna might have felt himself somewhat frustrated (if not embarrassed) six months ago when he presented and voted for the same 2013 Financial Estimates that a PN administration had presented beforehand. This time he has no excuses for doing no more than present the same initiatives. The economic milieu is not fixed and as we address old challenges, new ones come up. There were no new job-creation measures in the budget, even though the jobless rate has been slowly climbing upwards in the last few months. If, thanks to the PN’s policies, we have forgotten the risks, this does not mean they have gone away.

The tax burden

One of Joseph Muscat’s habits in his days in Opposition was to take the estimated increase in government revenue, divide it by the population and announce the tax burden per capita. He would then bandy this figure around as indicating what extra amount the government would be taking from your pocket in the coming year. For some reason, this simple and regular calculation did not feature in any of the government’s press conferences or PR.

It should not have presented any challenges. The estimated increase in the government’s revenue for 2014 is a cool €170 million. Somebody took the trouble and arrived at the figure of €400 a year for every man, woman and child (even though they usually don’t pay taxes) living in this country. By comparison, Labour’s big energy plan should reduce charges to the tune of €177 per capita and that’s only if you give the government the benefit of the doubt.

European Commission report on budget a slap in the face

The European Commission is not an institution usually given to populism or spin. Its opinions are expressed in the restrained language of technocrats but that does not make its analyses less hard-nosed, straightforward or uncompromising. The Commission made it known that the Maltese government’s fiscal plans for 2014 “do not specify in detail the measures that underpin the revenue and expenditure targets for 2014”.

Finance Minister Edward Scicluna insists that the European Commission’s opinion of Malta’s budget plan proved that the government was on the right track, despite the fact that the Commission has shown scepticism on the country’s ability to meet its target to reduce the deficit below 2.7 per cent. It looks more likely that the deficit will go up to above 3.4 per cent instead.

For all of Edward Scicluna’s attempts to spin it otherwise, the Commission has clearly expressed what we all fear: that this is a budget that fudged the real issues.

Selling citizenship: the Budget’s only idea

As already argued, the new Labour Government seems to think that its new scheme of cheaply selling citizenship to foreigners is the answer to the previous government’s creation of successful niches such as the financial services. In reality, this is turning out to be an ugly affair. Labour has once again attracted international media attention for the wrong reason. It has, once again, exposed us to ridicule and put our reputation at stake in spite of being forewarned.

The problem is that even if the Prime Minister is well aware that this scheme is not the least popular with Maltese citizens, he is equally aware that all the nice and agreeable measure he presented in the budget, simply will not fly without the potential income to be generated from this scheme.