The Labour Party said that statistics published today by the NSO showed that Nationalist Party leader Alex Borg had lied about the country's finances in the week leading up to the election.

A week ago, Alex Borg, at the height of the electoral campaign, lied during a political activity in Naxxar when he claimed that this statement had not been published because the Government wanted to hide that it had increased the national debt, the PL said. Borg also tried to undermine the NSO by saying it is manipulated by the Government. 

In reality, this was completely untrue. First, because those statistics were about non‑consolidated debt, and therefore not according to the definition used by Eurostat. This fact was clear from the title of the printout Borg was waving, but which he apparently did not read. Second, because those statistics were, in the official words of the European Central Bank, "overstated" or higher than they should have been.

Today the NSO statement has finally been released, and "it has burst once and for all the bubble that Alex Borg and the media aligned with him tried to inflate". The national debt did not increase by €1 billion in one month as Alex Borg claimed, because such an increase occurred over a full year. Not only has the government's financial situation not worsened, but the deficit on the Consolidated Fund in April was less than €66 million, or €196 million less than the same month a year earlier.

The result achieved in April was the third best ever recorded, the PL said. In the same period in 2012, the deficit was four times that observed this year. Had the people not been able to recognise "Alex Borg's deceit", today we would have a Prime Minister who won his mandate through a lie about public finances - a lie he knew would be exposed as such just a few days after the election.

The Nationalist Leader should apologise to the public for the lie he told on the eve of the election, while also withdrawing the unprecedented attack he made on the NSO - an institution that enjoys both local and international respect. The statisticians who work in this entity certainly deserve a public apology from the PN leader for what he alleged about them a week ago in Naxxar.