The budget and Gozo

Coming at the heels of rafts of pre-electoral and pre-budget hubristic proposals and pro- mises, the 2009 budget was doomed to be an anti-climax for Gozo.

Indeed, we had 29 electoral promises and 42 pre-budget proposals. Significantly the latter were launched this July 12, on the morrow of an all-time high price of crude oil.

Of all these promises and proposals, only a couple of new projects and initiatives were included in the budget. All the rest that this important socio-economic development tool contains for Gozo are sheer run-of-the-mill or else long-overdue ones.

It is disheartening to note, for instance, the substantial reductions in the Gozo Ministry vote for EU co-funded projects, namely the upgrading of the Villa Rundle garden, the reconstruction of the Ta' Pinu and Xlendi roads and the upgrading of the operating theatre and the radiology unit at the Gozo Hospital. It is disconcerting that this vote has been reduced from €12.2 million in 2007 to €5.8 million in 2008 and to €3.1 million for next year when the projects should be started in earnest.

It is even more disheartening that not a single euro was spent on these projects out of the 2007 allocation and only a few thousand euro have been spent this year. Two years of the seven-year EU Structural Funds 2007-2013 programming period have already gone by and the projects are still at the caterpillar stage.

Moreover, according to the list of approved projects under Operational Programme 1, the estimated cost of these Gozo projects is €12.7 million. Therefore, the allocation for 2009 will go only one-fourth of the way in their implementation.

However, the real crux of the issue of EU co-funded projects is not the unduly delayed implementation of these first five projects, even if that in itself is bad. Indeed, one might even question the top prioritisation of the upgrading of Villa Rundle garden at a cost of over €2.1 million. Gozitans were surely not clamouring for this project and Gozo certainly has more urgent needs than that.

The biggest concern is that as years roll along it will become ever more difficult for the government to keep its promise that Gozo will take 10 per cent of the €983.4 million of the current EU Structural and Cohesion funds programme.

It will become harder and harder for Gozo to spend and make the optimal use of €95 million on EU co-funded projects, on top of another €45 million on the normal capital programme, in the last four years of the present EU programming period.

Considering the exasperatingly long delays experienced in the implementation of EU co-funded projects such as the urban waste water treatment plant and the solid waste transfer station, which are to date not even complete, one doubts whether Gozo has the capacity to absorb some €140 million efficiently and effectively with maximum benefit in a short period of four years.

One ardently hopes that the government promise of 10 per cent of EU funds for Gozo would not result in just convenient political blather.

Having said that, one notes with satisfaction that the government seems set to embark on a radical reform of the public transport service on Gozo. This measure had already been proposed by the Labour Party and so there should be no political bickering on this initiative.

One could therefore perhaps consider the setting up of a committee, with the inclusion of a representative of each of the two main political parties plus AD, to hammer out with the Gozo Bus Owners' Association an agreement that does justice with the present bus owners and that does economic, social and environmental sense for Gozo.