The launching of the budget every year is a major factor in the administration of the country. But its impact is much smaller that is believed by those who work on it from the government side, and those who shoot it down from the Opposition. Surely the budget for 2025 will follow this pattern.

Any budget will get praised following its launch if it introduces positive measures, but these soon get forgotten. The focus of public attention will turn elsewhere and only government spokespersons will continue to talk about it.

If the budget proposes tough measures, then yes, debate about it will continue. Criticism and controversies will proliferate, not least when the "tough" measures come to be implemented. Over the last twenty years, governments have paid attention to methods by which unpleasant solutions are kept away from the budget. This happened everywhere, not just in Malta.

Even so, the pressure from the EU continued to emphasize the need for the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact to be fully respected. Quite a number of  countries discovered that this is easier to proclaim than to carry out in practice. The most recent country to come face to face with the issue was Germany which was the strictest to insist for a full respect of European rules designed to ensure that European governments stayed "responsible" in their budget-making.

***

POLITICAL PAPERS

I am one of those people who over the years, defended the need for political parties to possess their own newspapers and other means of communication.

Still I admit that sometimes (?) partisan commitments do lead to situations where let's say, party newspapers morph into the caricatures that their competitors like to tag them with.

Last Sunday, the two party weeklies carried a a variety of attacks against each other that were symmetric in the yes-no charges they traded. For readers, it seemed like one was witnessing white and black swinging from one side to the other.

There was however one topic that apparently both sides agreed upon. They carried no reference (a report and/or a comment) about the protest organised at St Julian's the previous day, against the monstruosity of a hotel construction that's going to happen at Villa Rosa.

Was it just a coincidence that both sides ignored it?

***

SHAMEFUL

To change currency from euro to sterling or dollar in cash, you cannot use the internet. You need to go to a cashier at a bank (among others).

This week, in a BOV branch that shall be nameless but is situated in a region where the number of BOV branches has been reduced: of the three cashier positions available, only one was manned. People waiting: 7. Twenty five minutes later only one had been dealt with. During those twenty five minutes, the cashier spent some 13 minutes outside his position (to consult...?) and 7 more minutes working out of papers he had before him, without calling for the next person in the queue.

Without any doubt, at HSBC matters are not any better - perhaps they're worse. The banks in Malta (which in theory deserve full support) are abusing their dominance on a number of fronts: they multiply administrative charges; they maintain interest rates low on deposits, charge high on lending; and with the excuse of needing to implement "cost cutting" they provide a shameful service to their clients.