Mr Seguna is a lab technician who works in a silversmith workshop. He lives in a maisonette in Tarxien with his wife and two daughters: one aged 21 and the other seven. He is the only breadwinner and is paying off a bank loan. He earns around €12,000 a year and the family owns a Subaru van, a Vauxhall and a Citroen.

Mr Seguna thinks he will not benefit from the Budget. "It is a very good Budget but there is nothing in it for me. What will be given to me in benefits will be removed in another way."

He says the government always says many things but actually does nothing. Mr Seguna was disappointed the Budget did not include a widening of the promised tax bands to have more spending money for himself and his family.

Even though taxes were not increased, Mr Seguna says he did not put it past the government to introduce new ones during the year.

The government introduced a scheme to ease the impact of the new tariffs but Mr Seguna says this will not ease his hefty bills.

Mr Seguna says his bills should always have improved because he used energy saving devices, such as light bulbs. "I always used energy saving bulbs at home, from the very start, and yet nothing. My bills keep on going up."

He also feels the vehicle tax registration should have been changed. "I did a lot of maintenance work on our family cars but the licence will keep on going up, which means less spending money. We can't afford to buy new cars."

Mr Seguna said this year's Budget will create more expenses for him and his family.


Small business owner - Franco Bajada, 48

Third-generation owner of Francis Bajada & Sons, an old and established menswear shop in Valletta, he has been in the retail business for the last 30 years, claiming to have seen it all - the good, the bad and the ugly. Married, with two teenage children, Mr Bajada lives in a three-bedroom flat in the heart of Sliema and drives a Skoda Roomster.

He earns around €45,000 a year - falling squarely into the middle-class budget - and "lives for the day". He does not save a penny and his priorities are his children's education and his family's overall well-being.

Following the Budget speech, Mr Bajada said that, as a small retailer, he was now looking forward to Christmas. There were "no shocking surprises" that would keep consumers back and he was filled with confidence in them and their Christmas shopping.

"Given the current scenario, it is an ambitious budget, which looks ahead to the future, particularly with the incentives for the small and medium-sized businesses," he said.

Mr Bajada was particularly hit by the setting up of a fund of €10 million to give a micro-credit to SMEs and the self-employed to provide them with the necessary liquidity for investment, as well as fiscal benefits to motivate invest, expand and increase their efficiency.

He was especially pleased with the continued investment in education, again particularly in view of the current economic situation.

Given his strong interest in his own children's education, he was impressed by the government's plan to incentivise the creative areas of the economy, considering the focus on art and culture to be another plus.

"Gone are the days when you can expect the government to do it all," Mr Bajada said, adding that, considering the global recession, the last five months have "not been that bad" for his small business when compared to overseas.


Student - Anna Abela, 21

Ms Abela is a fourth-year law student who lives in Attard with her parents, both full-time professionals. In summer she teaches English and during the rest of the year she does voluntary work with student organisations, so she survives on her student maintenance grant and summer income.

She does not have a car yet, but is going to driving lessons. Most of her monthly stipend goes towards public transport and driving lessons, as well as clothes, educational material and entertainment.

Ms Abela said the highlight of the Budget was the University Trust Fund which encourages greater University autonomy and more research.

The €11 million increase in investment was to be expected in line of the National Commission for Higher Education's ambitious roadmap, she added.

She suggested some of this investment should be used to update the library, improve science laboratories and build a multi-storey car park, adding that the public transport reform would also be very beneficial for students.

She was disappointed not to see a second trust fund to raise money for major infrastructural projects because public expenditure was not enough for all the needs of higher education institutions.

Ms Abela praised other measures to create jobs for young graduates and initiatives to encourage female graduates to work.

However, she warned that the high utility bills may hit Gozitan students who live alone in Malta the hardest.

She also praised initiatives promoting youth activism and encouraging young entrepreneurs.

She was especially pleased to see an emphasis on the arts, in "sharp contrast" to previous budgets which were "technology-centric".

However, she was disappointed by the lack of incentives for student mobility, since Malta experienced a 10-15 per cent drop in Erasmus participation over the past five years.


Unemployed - Anna Castaldi, 52

Ms Castaldi, who is a single mother, lives in a seafront apartment in Pietà with her 13-year-old son, who attends St Martin's College, a private school in Swatar. She pays €130 a month for her home loan and struggles to make ends meet with €395 a month in unemployment benefits. Her family, and one of her neighbours, help her financially. She drives a Toyota Starlet and has been looking for a job for a number of years now.

She said the Budget was "not too bad", but she expected a better cost of living increase to make good for spiralling costs. "The €5.82 a week is too low," she said, adding that she was extremely tight for cash and would not manage to make ends meet had it not been for her family.

"I think I will remain more or less as I was in the past year," she said, although her situation was not very good.

"I have touched the bottom in the past 18 months," she said, adding that, although she used to host English language students, she only had eight this summer.

Ms Ciscaldi agrees with the strengthening of means testing, saying that she believed people who abused of benefits should be identified and penalised.

She is worried about increases in water and electricity bills, which are reducing her cash flow. Recently she had to fork out more than €500 for four electricity bills.

Although she said she wanted to find a job, Ms Ciscaldi does not register for work. "I want to find a job which allows me to take care of my son and my health," she said, explaining that she was diabetic and suffered from gluten intolerance.


Pensioner - Edward Midolo, 64

Mr Midolo and his wife have been married for 36 years and live in a terraced house in Attard where they brought up their son. Mr Midolo retired after working as a distributor with Farsons for 40 years and today lives on a full pension and drives a Ford Fiesta.

In his spare time he likes browsing the internet and enjoys keeping abreast with local and foreign news with a particular interest in economic issues.

He was "positively surprised" by the Budget as he backed the government's commitment to secure employment and ensure that the economy gets back on its feet during a time when the whole world was facing economic problems. He agreed that investment in education would help strengthen the economy and was particularly impressed by the new Work Trial Scheme aimed to help people seeking employment.

He was glad that, as in the past two Budgets, the government guaranteed the full cost of living increase to pensioners even though there were no other measures specifically targeted at pensioners.

He hoped that the proposed Price Watch System would ensure better consistency between prices as he saw them abroad and those quoted in Malta. All too often the same item cost more in a Maltese supermarket than in a store in a different country to the detriment of the Maltese consumer. This price inconsistency also applied to medicines.

He welcomed the government's decision to increase medicines made available on the government formulary, extend the Pharmacy of Your Choice Scheme to reach thousands of new patients and tackle waiting lists with the allocation of €4 million.

All he hopes for now was that promises would be delivered and he appealed to the government to work with the social partners to iron out any stumbling blocks towards implementation.


Lawyer - Edward Saliba, 33

A senior associate of the law firm Deguara Farrugia Advocates, he has been practising law for eight years. Unmarried, he lives with his family in their Ħamrun house, and drives a Peugeot 306. Dr Saliba enjoys a good social life at weekends after a long working week that could end after 8 p.m. every night.

Dr Saliba was particularly hit by the vote for tourism at a time of crisis - €31 million to the Malta Tourism Authority and a special package that provides an increase from €2 to €5 million to address the situation.

"It shows the willingness of the government to invest in an important sector of the economy, providing sufficient tools for the parliamentary secretary to continue his valuable work in the industry."

Dr Saliba believed it was fundamental that a proper and coordinated system be put in place for the proposed joining of forces of the Inland Revenue, Vat and Customs Departments to curb abuse and tax evasion, as, otherwise, the relaying of outdated or incorrect information could be unnecessarily detrimental to law-abiding individuals and corporate entities.

Funds for enterprises in difficulty were a one-off measure that he considered to be positive in the light of the economic crisis.

The increase from five to seven years within which a seller could decide to pay tax on the sale of a second property was "unexpected" and he expressed his doubts as to whether it would really help the real estate industry. "It is a positive move, but more could have been done in this respect."

Dr Saliba augured that incentives to generate jobs were not just words in the air and would be put into practice. The negative aspect of the Budget lay in the increase in water and electricity rates and, while Dr Saliba did not blame the government for this measure, he said it showed the shortcomings of this and previous administrations that did not invest in renewable energy in the past and were still failing to.


Environmentalist - George Debono, 73

Aretired medical doctor, he has lived in various European cities most of his working life and currently resides in a Sliema penthouse, equipped with solar heating and photovoltaic panels, producing a third of his electricity.

With his "tiny" pensions from everywhere, Dr Debono falls into the middle-income group - more than he needs, being quite "frugal". Concerned about pollution, he travels everywhere by bicycle.

"Given Malta's serious pollution problem and the threat of climate change, the environment may have featured more in this Budget," he said, highlighting some good points, such as encouragement of the purchase of Euro IV and V-compliant commercial transport vehicles, the incentives to small enterprises for investment in energy-efficient and renewable energy equipment, smart meters and, especially, the clamp-down on smuggling diesel equipment and the continuation of what he termed "limited" fiscal incentives for the installation of photovoltaic and solar water-heating equipment.

However, there was no mention of any improvement in feedback tariff rates, which was a key factor in motivating investment in photovoltaic equipment.

Dr Debono pointed out "the lack of further refinement aimed at inducing a trend to drive small cars through reducing registration and annual road tax on economical vehicles, while increasing steeply the taxes on larger ones.

"It is also puzzling that motor boats, which are probably a significant source of pollution and CO2 emissions, seem to have been fiscally favoured," he noted.

"Utility rates pose a problem and the solution of direct financial aid to offset price increase is a bit roundabout. Here, the polluter-pays principle should apply by maintaining an unchanged, fixed price for low consumers and increasing the price for high consumers," he explained.

Rather than encourage speculation by decreasing tax burdens on property transactions, quite the opposite should have been done because development is leading to degradation of the environment, he said.

Nevertheless, Dr Debono's overall impression was positive. The emphasis on education was particularly welcome, especially as regards the training scheme and stipend for unemployed youths, the encouragement of creativity, sport, culture and creative entrepreneurship.

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