Government should stop playing with figures - PL

The government's economic forecast for this year was a puerile attempt at deceit, Labour spokesman on economic affairs Gavin Gulia said yesterday.

He said the government's overly optimistic economic projections and its failure to revise them were undermining its credibility. The government should stop playing with figures, especially when exports were falling at unprecedented rates.

Dr Gulia recalled that in the last Budget, the government had projected a growth rate of three per cent for 2008 and 2.5 per cent for this year as it tried to impress people with the illusion that Malta was resilient to the international crisis.

In contrast, the European Commission was proposing a growth rate of 0.7 per cent for Malta.

Since the local situation was expected to get worse, owing to impact of the recession abroad and the tourism situation, the Commission's projections were more credible than the government's, he said.