MLP 'never' sought to discredit Gordon Cordina

The Labour Party has insisted it never sought to discredit or personally attack the former director general of the National Statistics Office, Gordon Cordina, when it brought up inconsistencies in official figures.

Dr Cordina stepped down last month as director general of the NSO, amid increasing pressure by the MLP, only a few months after his appointment.

During the lengthy controversy over revisions made to official data, the MLP highlighted Dr Cordina's pro-EU stance several times, which had placed him in the party's bad books before the European Union referendum.

However, according to MLP deputy leader Charles Mangion, the fact that Super One repeatedly showed footage of Dr Cordina addressing a meeting of the pro-EU camp in 2003 was only intended to provide background to a public figure and never intended to cast doubt on the economist's capabilities.

"Our reports were of a purely technical nature and devoid of any political or personal observations. Neither I nor (Labour leader) Alfred Sant ever criticised Dr Cordina personally," Dr Mangion insisted during a press conference yesterday.

A fresh report analysing the reply given by the NSO to Labour's initial report yesterday "proved the MLP's claims right" and showed that the NSO had "failed to address the major technical issues highlighted in the MLP's initial report", Dr Mangion said, adding that clarifying certain issues was necessary to strengthen the NSO's credibility.

Asked who, in his view, had manipulated data - whether it was Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, Finance Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech, the former DG of the NSO Alfred Camilleri, now permanent secretary within the Finance Ministry, or Dr Cordina - Dr Mangion said he never said data had been manipulated but that on a technical level there were several inconsistencies that merited an explanation.

"It seems that whoever was compiling data was doing it wrongly."

When pressed, he said that employment figures for last year had been initially given to match what Dr Gonzi had said on Independence Day last year, namely that the country had created 4,000 jobs. The downward revision, which proved that it was not true that so many jobs had been created, seemed rather suspicious.

"What we said was that if mistakes were made they should have been acknowledged. The reliability of statistics is vital for important decisions to be taken," Dr Mangion said.

The NSO's reply published on January 26 failed to address or provide a proper explanation to nine issues raised in the MLP report 'Recent Revisions to GDP statistics'.

These included the inconsistencies in the balance of payments and a discrepancy in the subsidies given to the Water Services Corporation. In the WSC case, the Budget Estimates 2007 had given figures that were different from those published by the NSO.

On significant revisions made to profits made by the tourism industry in 2005, Labour said the NSO's explanation that profits had dwindled because of high water and electricity costs was "not convincing" because while the impact of the surcharge had been considered in tourism, it had not been taken into account for the manufacturing sector.

The NSO had also failed to clarify revisions made to components that made up the GDP in 2006, such as the impact of inventories and exports.

Dr Mangion said the party had received no reply from Eurostat or any other country that the statistics report had been forwarded to.

During the budget debate in November 2006, the MLP accused the NSO of boosting false accusations made by the prime minister, who claimed at the time that the country's financial deficit had peaked at 10 per cent of GDP when Dr Sant was in government 10 years ago.

The NSO claimed the mistake had been a simple misprint and issued a correction a few hours before Dr Gonzi tackled the subject in Parliament.

Labour's accusations of fudging around with data to cover the government's partisan propaganda came soon after, when data published last December revised statistics, published just three months earlier, which put up GDP figures for 2004-2006.

The NSO has since officially dismissed claims its officials have been under pressure to fiddle with data published.