The question was raised regarding the apparent drastic decrease in government income tax revenues during the month of February compared to those of the same month last year. Did this happen because of the income tax cuts introduced with this year's budget? If so, the matter could be disquieting for meanwhile, government's recurrent expenditures continued to rise at a high rate.

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana explained why this happened. In December of last year, a big payment on income tax due was received earlier than expected. It wasn't effected in February as usual, and that's where the discrepancy between the two Februaries - of last year and this year's - came from.

Caruana's explanation was clear. Is it convincing? Will the sum paid out last December be transfered in the same way this year? It is true that the transactions involved reflect cash flows in the tax revenue stream but over the medium term the cash flow situation offers insights regarding how the books are being balanced or thrown off track.

In a context where government's recurrent expenditures have been racing ahead and everything seems to hang on a sustained high rate of economic growth, a constant alert must be kept on how government's financial receipts are developing.

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SYSTEMIC

When administrative enquiries are held on some aspect of public administration that fails to deliver in a big way, it is a mistake for them to focus exclusively on the particular incidents that would have arisen. That there should be such a focus is clear but on its own, it is not enough.

Frequently when some kind of crash happens in public management, the reason cannot just be attributed to a once-only occurrence. Unfortunately, behind a major failure in a public organization, one finds a sequence of unacceptable practices that have become "normal". The responsibility for this does not lie only with who is indulging in such practices, but also with whoever is responsible to ensure to not let them happen and instead allows them to to take place systematically.

An administrative enquiry needs to delve (and not superficially) in this systemic aspect. It's rarely done, if ever.

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DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The list of countries that the Trump administration wanted to hit with its tariff increase on their exports to the US was a very long one. Practically all countries were affected.

What amazed me was how the list included even very small states which belong to the so-called category of developing countries. It consists of countries which are economically very weak, many of them ex-colonies of the West.  During all the years that I've been following international trade and diplomacy, it was always agreed that in their relations with such countries, the rich states should unilaterally extend to the "poor" ones some preferential treatment in trade dealings. This would be meant to help the "poor" countries in their development efforts.

Not any more according to Trump. He's expecting that in their trade dealings, these countries should give the US the same "preferential" treatment the US gives them.