Budget time is a cycle in the life of a legislature that politicians look forward to with particular enthusiasm to reassert their positions and attempt to gainpolitical mileage.
Although the budget ought not to be turned into a political tug-of-war, that is exactly what politicians will be doing when Parliament starts debating the votes for each ministry. The exercise was set off by the political party leaders immediately after the presentation of the estimates.
Ministers will go all out to try to convince people that in the short time their party has been in government they have turned the economy around and that, echoing Harold Macmillan’s famous quote, most of the people have never had it so good.
Their opponents will be telling a different story, arguing that the robust growth the economy is showing is a result of the good work they had done in their time, but that there are now some underlying problems that need to be seen to with urgency.
Public debt has gone up, exports and production have dropped and, they claim, unemployment is being kept low only through the expansion of the labour force in the public service.
Many people just love following this ping-pong game but many others have become so weary of this annual charade that they simply dread budget time. In this respect, Budget 2015 got off to a bad start as the Finance Minister took almost four hours to get through his speech.
The budget has come to be considered more as an opportunity to score political goals than anything else. It is all very well to strike an optimistic note, but it will be wrong to underestimate difficulties arising in certain areas, such as, for example, particular sectors in manufacturing.
Very serious concerns over the threat to the environment represented by what appears to be an obsession to turn the island into the Dubai of the Mediterranean are likely to develop into a festering sore among a growing swathe of the population as the few remaining open spaces are gobbled up by concrete in the name of progress. Is this what the majority voted for?
Tourism is one of the main motors of the economy, generating huge income and thousands of jobs. But tourism is a shy bird and could easily be hit by unforeseen circumstances as so many tourist destinations have found out over the years. Will there be time during the budget debate for parliamentarians from both sides to discuss the kind of economic vision that Malta should focus on in the years to come?
From manufacturing and tourism, the country expanded into services, more recently branching out into iGaming and aircraft servicing. These have served, and are still serving, the island well.
But the country needs to generate new economic activity in order to be able to make up for economic activities that start to wane under new competitive pressures.
Selling passports may be a good idea to attract ready cash, but the novelty may soon wear off.
Revamping the maritime trade is one sector that has great potential for expansion. What other economic activities are suitable for Malta? The island needs to think outside the box.
Domestic problems, such as health and transport, are likely to continue to dominate much of the budget debate, but it is also important to wriggle out of the political straitjacket for a while in an effort to come up with fresh ideas to develop new economic activities.