Nationalist Party Deputy Leader Alex Perici Calascione has told The Malta Independent that the country has "a right to expect that what was promised before the election will be delivered" in the upcoming Budget.

Perici Calascione was asked in an interview about the Budget for the upcoming year, which is to be announced on 26 October.

"They made the economy one of the backbones of their campaign.  I remember the Prime Minister asking people who they want as Economy Minister, as Finance Minister, and so on - now we have his Economy Minister, his Finance Minister, and he has the calculator in his hands, so it's very clear that it's the right - not the expectation - of the country that was assured that with a PL electoral win the economy would continue to grow and that all promises would be enacted to see them delivered."

"There is nothing that has happened between last May and today that should in any way change things," he said.

"I would expect, and I think we have a right to expect, no particular surprises or dents to the government implementing what it promised," he said.

The remarks come within the context of question marks being raised as to whether the government will implement one of its standout electoral pledges - the €1,000 super bonus - in the upcoming Budget.

Asked about the PN not issuing a pre-Budget document, Perici Calascione brushed off the criticism.  When the party prepared a document it was criticised for jumping the gun, the PN deputy leader said, and now that it has decided not to prepare it, there is criticism regardless.

But he turned his attention again to the government: "I think the whole country has a right to expect that what was promised is now delivered," he said.

Perici Calascione is, besides being the PN's Deputy Leader, the party's Shadow Minister for Tourism.

Asked whether commentary suggesting that Malta is suffering from the consequences of overtourism or whether the situation is not as bad as it seems, Perici Calascione said that it is a "grave concern."

"Unless we stop considering the number of arrivals as effectively the sole measure of success for tourism and make the shift that has been demanded by the industry, acknowledged by the government but never fully implemented - a shift from volume to value, from quantity to quality - we will keep experiencing one problem after another," he said.

He said that the number of tourists coming to Malta has always been on the increase because that's what the policy has been and because it is running in parallel with population increase, which is "coming from a set, specific, and clear voluntary strategy to build the economy by importing cheap labour."

Things have now come to a head, he said, particularly as while tourists have been welcomed with open arms for many years, residents in tourist hotspots now view them with suspicion and as something which is no longer intrinsically positive but as something which is negatively affecting their quality of life.

Perici Calascione produced a shocking statistic as he referred to the government's Vision 2050 - which was drafted and published within the last year.

He said that according to current projections from the National Statistic Office, Malta this year is set to hit the number of tourist arrivals that Vision 2050 predicted Malta would not have before 2035.

"Somebody somewhere has to explain the methodology that was used last year and on what basis they anticipated these numbers in nine years' time, and how we are instead hitting them within 12 months," he said.

He said that this means that the country is still "chasing numbers."

"I'm not saying that we shouldn't chase numbers; but we need to look at the quality of the tourists coming, their spend, their length of stay, and the length of their experience.  When you market for the masses you run the risk of not marketing the essentials of Malta and Gozo's characteristics enough," he said.

He said that specific sectors should not be viewed just as niches - as add-ons to the mass market - and that the infrastructure needs to match the product.

"You can have a perfect restaurant, but it's not the obligation of the restaurant owner to make sure that the rubbish in front of his shop is collected, or the obligation of the chef to clean up the promenade," he said.

Perici Calascione said that the over-tourism problem is exploding at the same time as the over-population problem.

"The reality is there: somebody definitely has the maths wrong as we have a vision for nine years in the future which is happening now.  It is a concern and we have a collective obligation to save our tourist industry and preserve what's good in it," he said.

He said that the Opposition will be "fully positive" and will hold the government to task and criticise what it feels is wrong and push for what it feels is right, while cooperating with the government to the fullest extent on good initiatives.

"We are definitely late in doing this, but we can still do it: we need a huge shift towards quality over quantity and value over volume.  It's urgent: 10 years ago it sounded nice, but now it's a matter of urgency," he said.

However the situation at times seems to present two conflicting realities: people are tired of Malta's reputation as a mass touristic, party-island, yet studies commissioned by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association say that tourist arrivals need to continue to increase in order to sustain the hotel industry.

Asked how the PN reconciles these two realities, Perici Calascione said that as far as Malta's reputation as a party-island goes, he has "no problem with the right kind of entertainment." He cited concerts such as Isle of MTV and others "of a certain level" together with parties "which are organised seriously by serious people" as examples.

"It is a niche that is there," he said.

The issue, he added, is when the organisation "is a disaster" like in the case of a party from a few weeks ago.  He did not mention the party by name, but was ostensibly referring to the Freedom Street Party which saw people trying to get in without tickets and invading a KFC outlet in footage which went viral on the internet for all the wrong reasons.

"One badly organised event effectively ruins the work of the good operators," he said.

"The operators are there to make their money, but if they are well-organised, attract the right kind of crowd, offer the right type of entertainment, there can be a market that sits comfortably with going towards value," he said. "No economic sector is good for cowboys, but in this one particularly - if you get it wrong, it is really wrong."

He said that what the PN had proposed is more poignant that ever before, saying that one must look at the sector holistically, because there is a value chain of different industries relying on the sector.

He said that the party had proposed a number of things such as a one-stop-shop to reduce bureaucracy, and incentives on retraining and reskilling.  He also said that it is important for Maltese people to have a sense of pride again to work in the industry.

"Catering was a career; hotels were a career; tour operators, travel agents... today people are moving away from these because there isn't much of an incentive, so there must be those incentives," he said.

"It's a whole package, but what it needs is the right strategy.  If it is guided by quality, rather than quantity, then whatever you do moves in that direction," he concluded.

The first part of the interview was carried yesterday