'Rhetoric of recycled documents' - Mangion

Labour Party deputy leader Charles Mangion yesterday described the government's pre-budget statement as "a rhetoric of recycled documents".

The document was but a cut and paste exercise from other government documents that had not led anywhere, he added.

The much awaited tax reform, that is the Lm8 million that the government said it will be trimming from the tax bill would in effect mean a per capita saving of 38 cents, he claimed.

This saving would come when most citizens were paying about Lm10 in taxes.

Speaking during a news conference, Dr Mangion said the document slogan Gejjieni fis-Sod - a stable future - reminded him of the last pre-election slogan stable finances when in fact the country's finances were in a bad state.

On the change in the tax bands, Dr Mangion noted that once over 55,000 workers would not be affected at all, these workers deserved other benefits to make up for the hike in the water and electricity bills.

He said that the comment in the pre-budget document that indirect taxation was not what it should be, meant that the government would push up the VAT rate to 25 per cent.

Turning his sights to the economy, he said that between 2000 and 2004, the economy shrunk by an average of five per cent while the tax burden rose from 28 per cent to 37 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.

While wealth per capita, has dipped substantially, unemployment had risen to 8.5 per cent.

The quality of life, he pointed out, had deteriorated when one takes into account the fact that the wage increase last year and the beginning of this year was lower than the inflation rate that topped three per cent.

Underscoring the government's failure in tourism, Dr Mangion said the pre-budget document was based on a series of conclusions about the economy which when analysed would show a different picture from the one the government was painting.