Budget Talk – The Malta Independent
You are not a pensioner. You are not employed in the hotel and catering industry. Do not send your children for free daily care services. You do not travel by bus. You are not inheriting a classified property. You may be a landlord after 1976. You can work in healthcare or education. You are not from Gozo, employed in the public sector.
You are aware of the rising rise in prices for food and restaurants, or hotel accommodation. You are experiencing setbacks when doing business and face increasing costs to serve your customers due to the gray listing of Malta.
Transportation remains a headache for deliveries and work and the 12-fold increase in the freight rate means you can no longer import certain items as you used to and may need to restructure. .
Any day you could now face major infrastructure projects on your doorstep and under your bedroom balcony just as you were approaching a nervous episode after road works or excavation.
Farmers remain thrown from one basket to another.
A green project there means a black one here.
Moving to the side please, we need to make room for buses.
You try to explain to your winning tourists, why there is an industrial-sized aluminum tent on the well-advertised Triton Fountain square, or what is the reason for the dry pots in front of the Parliament building . Those platforms on the side or in the middle of the City streets have now taken hold for themselves as guides should explain their purpose and value in a UNESCO heritage city.
Wondering how many parking spaces are to be lost due to electric chargers for rental agencies. Or how much you can continue to enjoy swimming from the shore of your town or at the small beach.
But maybe you are a Maltese who buys an apartment in Gozo with a stamp duty reduction. You may have a culture of spending on entertainment and items. Both people in a couple or family are working. That forward-looking retirement has now been overshadowed by the chance to work without paying your pension tax. After all, that flat I built to rent and is still empty can’t pay for itself in these times.
According to The Times Budget Survey 2022, 24% voted Good, 15% voted Bad and 62% said it had no impact on them.
So, we mostly go back to one square. We are mostly where we were but we still face the same problems and issues that matter, as before. We only have a fuller Minister of Finance who presents it as the next best thing after sliced bread. The anti-dot Joseph Joseph Muscat. What stands out and thinks that Konrad Mizzi should testify in the PAC Committee.
Who benefits from the budget? What does it show and what does it hide?
It certainly hides the growing and unsustainable deficit. It leaves Steward hospital offerings to their advantage. It does nothing to address the exploitation of workers. There is a scheme to be set up to register employees but it has been mentioned before.
It helps employees working in the entertainment industry and restaurants by reducing their part-time income or overtime tax.
It does absolutely nothing to ensure that Malta gets off the gray list. What about court delays and exaggerated utility bills? How about the cost of property and getting a loan?
How are our elders protected from the closure of the branches of the banks in their vicinity? What happens to single mothers who need to work and find a place to rent or to the terrible situation in the Kordin Correctional Facility? What schools will find children and how will they withstand heat waves without AC?
Will those victims of construction accidents receive justice? How will others be protected in the future? Do you still need to have sleepless nights and unbearable days when the contractor moves in the next door? Are our skies and sea views lost forever?
Fingers crossed that a residence that accommodates 11 people in one house is not licensed next door or that the hotel at the bottom of your property does not become another place for entertainment or change to an apartment complex.
The result is that Malta is likely to face a financial crisis because the budget does not address the fundamental problems of the economy and leaves the private sector to relax.
In the past, privatization versus nationalization has been the political game. Nowadays is how much can we throw at taxpayers the cost of corruption and evasion and the marketing of our national assets and heritage without realizing it?
A small increase here will hide a large portion of take, there. Some planting of trees there will not hinder the desertification of Malta and a rubble wall in Gozo will look at the ODZ projects that surround the whole island. You may be forgiven for mixing Eco Gozo with Echo Gozo.
Air Malta will ride from CEO to CEO until it finds a home forever and ITS (Institute of Tourism Studies) will join MCAST as the rubber duck in the bath.
Both MCAST and ITS have been very important in the training of students and their qualification but they are seen by this government and discarded in the same way as they are our farmers.
There are many families in Gozo who are facing possible eviction and seizing the land like I have never seen before from that clause of a medieval organization. But we have to be impressed by a tunnel or metro.
Maybe Santa’s convoy is coming to save us. Malta has in the past found ways to benefit from its size, friends and good name. Unfortunately, it could soon disappear under the concrete and stone and its good name is now worthless.
But not everything is wrong. We can take courage from the fact that some who have not been touched so far have found themselves having to face some awkward truths while others come in and out of Parliament in their free time and their holidays to Italy by Joseph Muscat are safely marked, along with offshore accounts.