The truth can be a funny thing, and half-truths can be even funnier. Take, for example, the International Monetary Fund’s 2016 statement on Malta, which was published on Friday night and the government’s press release published yesterday morning dealing with the same subject matter.

In truth, the IMF’s findings on the soundness of the Maltese economy were, to use a cinematic cliché, a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s start with the good, which was the only focus of the government’s statement on the influential body’s findings on the Maltese economy.

The IMF’s opening statement attributed Malta’s exceptionally strong economic growth to the government’s sound policies and favourable external and domestic conditions. The IMF expects the Maltese economy’s strong economic growth to continue in the medium-term and expects strong job creation to continue in the coming years. It also had words of praise for the government’s adjustment measures, which, coupled with robust growth, will further improve fiscal consolidation in the near term – leading to a decline in the deficit and the public debt ratio.

Now what the government did not mention and which the media had not picked up, perhaps thanks to the ease of copying and pasting the government’s press release, was that there are a number of significant problematic issues beleaguering the economy.

There are number of home truths that can sometimes only be fully revealed by the critical eye of outsiders such as the analysts at the IMF.

For starters, the IMF called on Malta to be extra-vigilant and contain risks to the integrity of the country’s financial system emanating from the Individual Investor Programme, remote gaming and financial services. Along such lines, it called on Malta to apply a robust implementation of the Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism framework. The significance of this statement should not be lost on anyone, and certainly not on the government.

It also sounded alarm bells on Air Malta and Enemalta. The former, it said is witnessing a lagging recovery and the IMF called for faster restructuring to contain the fiscal risks the situation presents to the economy. It also urged the government to be extra-vigilant when it comes to Enemalta’s elevated government-guaranteed debt, and to keep a watchful eye on its operations.

As for the banking system, the IMF views it as appearing to be sound and resilient, but said it faces a number of challenges, among which are the protracted low interest rates, weak credit growth and legacy non-performing loans to the corporate sector.

Moreover, the banking sector’s high and increasing exposure of banks to the property market may increase financial stability risks. While the IMF found no apparent misalignment of property prices “at the current juncture”, it said that the persistence of upward trends in mortgage lending and the housing market may lead to imbalances, increasing risks to the financial system and the broader economy.

This, of course, has been said before but the situation has clearly not changed much.

What has also been said before, but which the government failed to address in its statement was that both the uncertainties surrounding Brexit and the EU’s bid for a bloc-wide corporate tax reform may affect the Maltese economy unfavourably, could both take a toll on economic activity – which can also be read as a potential recession in the making.

We may have cherry-picked the bad and the ugly from the IMF statement, but after the government’s own cherry-picking exercise, this has been necessary and only fair.

After all, what the government should have done was to have presented the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It should have addressed the problems raised and it should have addressed those issues head-on, explained them and the government’s solutions and mitigating actions rather than attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the media and, in turn, the public at large.

It is hoped that the government is, in fact, cognisant of the issues raised by the IMF and that it is not quite as delusional as it appears from its press release.