Michael Piccinino, the Nationalist Party MP and Shadow Minister for the Self-Employed, Small Enterprises and Cooperatives, has said the government does not even know how many people will be living in Malta by the end of this year, arguing that the country's overpopulation problem stems not from population growth itself but from the government's persistent failure to plan for it.

Asked about findings in the Chamber of SMEs' barometer, which identified overpopulation as Malta's main problem while simultaneously pointing to a labour shortage, Piccinino rejected the suggestion that the two findings were contradictory. He said the country's biggest problem, beyond business concerns, was that the government fails to plan across the board, and that this failure could be seen consistently.

Piccinino said he had tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister for Finance asking for the government's population projections for the end of 2026 up until 2030 and every year in between, submitted shortly after the release of 2025 population statistics. He said that, coincidentally, on the same day his question was answered, Prime Minister Robert Abela said the population would keep growing but at a slower pace, while Finance minister Clyde Caruana gave a differing account. Piccinino argued that while Abela's comment amounted to an opinion, Caruana's response was an official one, and said the business community did not want opinions but facts. He said the minister's official reply confirmed that the government does not produce such projections at all, meaning it does not know how many people will be in Malta by the end of the year.

He said this made it difficult to take seriously the government's long-term planning, including Vision 2050 strategy. He recalled raising  the same concern with Transport Minister Chris Bonett regarding the Malta Metro project, asking how the government could plan a mass transport system 15 years ahead without knowing how many people would be living in Malta by then. He said Bonett had replied that further studies were still needed. He said he had put an identical question to Energy Minister Miriam Dalli the previous week regarding investment in energy cabling, arguing that meaningful investment decisions could not be made without knowing demand, and said Dalli had avoided answering the question directly.

Piccinino noted that Alex borg had, before the election, proposed setting up an authority tasked with monitoring population levels, an idea he said appeared to have been shelved. He argued that addressing overpopulation requires a proper plan built on studies identifying where shortages exist and in which sectors, after which infrastructure investment - including energy and transport - could be carried out accordingly. He said it was inappropriate to speak of a Vision 20250 when the government does not know how many people will be living in Malta in the near term, let alone who they will be.

He linked the issue back to a proposal made during his time as PN secretary general, when the party had proposed that every locality carry out a capacity study to determine how many additional residents its existing infrastructure could support. He said the party had been clear at the time that it was not arguing certain localities could not accommodate more people, but that any growth needed to be matched by corresponding infrastructure. He said the government had mocked the proposal at the time, and while it may have persuaded some people it was a poor idea, he believed subsequent events - including recurring power cuts and drainage problems in various localities - had proven the party right, since the government had never assessed the capacity of individual localities before allowing their populations to grow.

Piccinino said that over the past 13 years the government had increased Malta's population without ensuring infrastructure kept pace, directly affecting businesses through closures linked to power failures, difficulties opening premises, blown lighting and damaged pavement. He said this was the core difficulty identified by the Chamber of SMEs, adding that while some of its findings might appear contradictory at first glance, they reflected the reality on the ground. He said the government was avoiding that reality and avoiding planning for the future.

Piccinino rejects claim he timed his exit to dodge a PN defeat

Piccinino also addressed the gap between the PN's performance in the local council and European Parliament elections, where its deficit narrowed to around 8,454 votes, and the subsequent general election, where the gap exceeded 20,000. He said the two types of election could not be directly compared, since votersapproach them with different mindsets. He said the party had undergone a change in candidates ahead of the general election campaign and pointed to renewed momentum since then, expressing hope that the party's performance in the 2031 general election would more closely match the results achieved in the local and European elections. He said there had been a shift in how people view the party.

Asked whether his decision to resign as secretary general before the general election, rather than after it, was a strategic move to distance himself from an anticipated defeat, Piccinino rejected the suggestion outright. He said Francis Zammit Dimech had first asked him to contest the 2022 general election back in 2021, an offer he initially turned down, though he had offered to help the party at its headquarters instead. He was later persuaded by Bernard Grech to contest the role of secretary general, and said he knew even at that point that a general election defeat was likely, adding that this was widely understood within the party at the time.

He said he was never afraid of holding the secretary general post through an electoral loss and had simply continued doing his job to the best of his ability. He recalled telling Grech, ahead of the subsequent local council and European Parliament elections, that regardless of the result he intended to step down from the secretary general role, though he ultimately chose not to announce this on election night itself in order to avoid speculation. He said his decision was rooted in wanting to base his candidacy on direct contact with voters through house visits, something he said would not have been possible while still serving as secretary general.

On whether the PN's repeated election defeats under different leaders meant "wrong tactics" should give way to "wrong product" as the honest explanation, Piccinino said tactics and product were related but distinct issues. He said each electoral cycle begins the moment a result is declared, and said that over the current legislature the party had managed to halve Labour's lead. He said the party needed to keep building on that progress, taking into account the full context of where it had come from and what has been happening both within the party and the country more broadly.

Asked what he considered a fair criticism of himself, from within or outside the party, Piccinino said he sometimes speaks too quickly about matters he is still working on, and said it was important for him to ensure his message reaches people clearly.

First part of the interview was carried yesterday