With the cost of social security expected to spiral to a staggering €828 million this year, the government is justified in attempting to do all it can to reduce welfare dependency. It mainly plans to do this through a programme aimed at encouraging those living social benefits to try to get back to work.

In its 2015 pre-Budget document, launched by the finance minister, the government is making this aim the central plank in the drive to cut the welfare bill. The exercise has been tried before but with the cost of social benefits rising to new heights, the government is this time trying to achieve better results than those we’ve seen so far.

It will be far from easy since the problem is not just about offering incentives, however attractive these may be. First, there has to be work to go to. Then there are other side issues, such as whether those on the dole are in a position to take up the training that will help them become able to join the labour force. If they are not, the Employment and Training Corporation should be there to help them take the right course that would prepare them for new jobs. However, rather than training, others may require a change of attitude.

Progress has been made in encouraging more women to take up employment, as shown by the fact that the female participation rate has gone up from 47.5 per cent to 50.2 per cent. However, there is another aspect of the problem that has always proved difficult to tackle and that is fraud.

There is outright fraud that has to be fought frontally and fraud of a more subtle kind, such as the breaking up of households purposely for those doing so to get State benefits.

In all, for this year alone, €144.3 million has been allocated to 19,551 claimants dependent on unemployment assistance, social assistance and single unmarried parent allowances. Finance Minister Edward Scicluna made an apt remark when he observed in the pre-Budget document that the social security system may in certain cases create a series of perverse effects in the sense that, once claimants get into the benefit system, they are then reluctant to move out.

Excluding the parts dealing with the plans to cut dependency on social benefits and address the inefficiencies in the public health sector, the pre-Budget document essentially consists of a review of the performance of the economy over the first half of this year, with a dose of subtle politics thrown in for good measure. For instance, in the conclusion to the part that deals with fiscal sustainability, the finance ministry says that “the new government managed to sustainably reduce the deficit-to-GDP ratio below the three per cent threshold within just one year”.

The ministry is making it sound as if “the new government” had to build the island’s finances from scratch. No mention is made of the difficulties the previous administration had gone through to steer the country away from the impact of the financial storm that had hit so many other countries.

Greater objectivity is required in official documents of this nature.

Also, while it is good to learn that the economy is on the right track, there are matters that would obviously have to be dissected further, such as the deterioration in labour productivity, the decline in manufacturing and financial services – two pillars of the island’s new economy – as well as the government’s tendency to continue to expand the public sector workforce.

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