Commitment to restaurateurs goes cold

Opposition tourism spokesman Evarist Bartolo said yesterday that a promise by the government in April to halve the contribution which restaurateurs made to the Malta Tourism Authority had been shelved.

Mr Bartolo said in Parliament that the commitment made in April had amounted to recognition by the government that restaurateurs were facing problems. Yet in the last budget estimates, this measure did not feature and a reply to a parliamentary question showed that this measure had been shelved.

Indeed, the situation was worse. Restaurateurs were now being charged Lm40 by the Lands Department for every table they had outside their premises, instead of Lm10 up to some time ago. This decision was taken without consultation with the tourism authorities. So much for the inter-ministerial committee meant to coordinate tourism-related decisions. Mr Bartolo said restaurateurs were continuing to suffer a lack of coordination among the various government departments. There was often no consistency in decisions taken by health officials, sometimes leading to expensive and ultimately useless changes.

All this was happening in an environment of rising costs, a decline in tourist numbers and a fall is disposable income by Maltese patrons.

This government had also not managed to bring in a lower VAT rate for restaurants, as some other EU member states had done.

And instead of helping this sector, the government was squandering funds on, for example, studies on the futile proposal for a golf course near Manikata.

Mr Bartolo said the Labour Party was committed to use taxation as a tool to improve the competitiveness of the tourism sector, including restaurants. Taxes should be equal or lower than in competing destinations.