Robert Abela is responsible for half of this total debt, the Nationalist Party said Wednesday. Our country had just over €5 billion in debt when Abela took over from Joseph Muscat. This means that under Robert Abela, the debt has more than doubled. Over the past year alone, Robert Abela accumulated €859 million in debt - that's €2.3 million in debt per day. Robert Abela has become synonymous with debt, the PN said.

Meanwhile, those close to power continue to pig out on public funds, as even Government insiders have admitted. This record level of debt is also leading to another record - that of interest payments which the government is having to cover using taxpayers' money. The public is currently paying around €710,000 per day in interest alone on this debt.

Minister Clyde Caruana boasted that Malta would exit the EU's Excessive Deficit Procedure earlier than expected, with the deficit forecast to reach the 3% threshold by 2026 - conveniently, just before the next general election, the PN said. However, despite the rhetoric, Malta is still breaching the EU's fiscal limits, and the small downward revisions being portrayed as major victories are masking a deeper problem, namely the failure to address structural weaknesses in public finances.

The Minister's satisfaction with a revised 2024 deficit of 3.7% (down from the budgeted 4.5%) as a triumph insults the intelligence of the public. A government spending less than originally forecast is not a cause for celebration; it is either an admission that the original forecast was inflated or politically motivated - or both.

Caruana, after saturating the country with foreign workers, has now exploded the national debt, the PN said. Shamelessly, he now wants thanks for managing to get Malta out of the Excessive Deficit Procedure - a problem he himself created.

The PN recalled how a survey among major entrepreneurs found that the deterioration in the political and regulatory climate is making Malta a less attractive destination for investment.

The alarming rise in national debt certainly does nothing to provide stability or peace of mind, and this is also a contributing factor to the reality that, as the survey showed, fewer investors now feel comfortable investing further in our country, the PN said.