As summer rolls by and the cooler months approach, meaning that Parliament will soon resume its business after a long recess, attention turns to the presentation of the budget for the following year.

Over the past days and weeks, we have had several organisations, including constituted bodies which are members of the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development, offering their thoughts on what the budget should include.

Employers and unions are in the forefront of this exercise, and they are known to keep a watchful eye on the proceedings. In the build-up to the day when Finance Minister Clyde Caruana reads out the budget, they are suggesting ways on how matters in the country could be improved. Naturally, they defend their turf and seek to push the government into taking decisions that are of benefit to their members.

These organisations have come up with their own recommendations as to what the government should be doing to find solutions to the myriad problems that the country is facing.

Prime Minister Robert Abela, like a true politician, is trying to win votes to strengthen the position of his party after an unexpected decline in popularity registered in the June elections. But while he is concentrating on what he says will be a budget that presents the biggest tax cut in history, the budget is a much more complex exercise that goes beyond dishing out some freebies to blind the blinkered populace.

There are issues which the government can no longer ignore. It has been told, time and again, that the current economic model is unsustainable. It has also been told that Malta cannot withstand the rapid increase in the population which, unless there are important changes, will continue to put pressure on the infrastructure. It has also been advised that Malta has reached a saturation point in terms of tourism numbers.

So far, the government has been oblivious to what the experts are saying. And one of these experts is the Finance Minister himself, who has in more ways than one tried to move the government into dealing with the growing concerns.  If the Finance Minister himself is unable to persuade the government he forms part of to change direction, then one wonders who will be able to do so.

One expects the Finance Minister, who has the overall picture at his disposition more than anyone else, to be forceful within the confines of Cabinet meetings to make it clear that Malta is heading in the wrong direction and that there needs to be a change of policy. If he truly believes that Malta should make the necessary adjustments but is unable to convince his superior and colleagues that Malta should shift direction, then he must be considered as being co-responsible for Malta's current predicament and the difficulties it will continue to face in the near future and beyond.

We will know more when the budget is presented in October. But we are already sure that the government will try to camouflage its faults and lack of planning by dishing out the goodies that make the headlines more than anything else.