Finally, after so much huffing and puffing, the Labout government has come out with a new timeline for its new energy project.

Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi announced in Parliament on Tuesday night that Enemalta now expects to start buying electricity from gas-fired power plants in June 2016. This means a delay of 15 months, not of “a couple of months”, as the Prime Minister had said when he admitted that the project was off track.

The first and most important question that needs to be asked and answered is how are the reduced rates now going to be financed.

The government undoubtedly meant well when it decided to tackle the situation at debt-ridden Enemalta, but it handled the programme haphazardly and was far from being transparent with the public. Up to only recently, both the Prime Minister and the Energy Minister were saying that the project was on track when, clearly, that was not the case.

If, as the minister is saying now, the gas power plant was “paused” after the election to see how they could integrate the new Chinese investment in Enemalta, why did the government fail to inform the public of this in time? Why did it keep saying the project was on track?

The minister says that a seven-year plan had been agreed with Shanghai Electric Power to make possible the reduction of the energy tariffs and also to make power generation more efficient. Although he declared that no taxes were planned to be levied to finance the cuts, he ought to have given full details of the plan before making the statement.

Shanghai Electric is taking a 30 per cent stake in Enemalta and also plans to convert the BWSC plant to gas.

The delay in the planned completion of the project is, of course, considerable and taxpayers ought to be told exactly what the government is doing on their behalf.

It had been announced that the consortium that would build a gas-fired power plant, Electrogas, had to make an up-front payment of €30 million in order to help finance the first tariff reduction. However, it is now known that the payment is to be staggered over 12 months.

Neither the company nor the government has come out with any explanation why this was happening.

Dr Mizzi has said more than once that the government has made the right decision and that he is ready to face the flak. It remains to be seen whether it was the right decision or not but the fact that the Energy Minister says he is prepared to face the political flak is an admission that he deserves it. However, it is not just Dr Mizzi who ought to get flak, but the Prime Minister too because he had promised to step down if the plant was not completed on time, that is, by March next year.

The Energy Minister chooses to make light of the matter or, maybe, he thinks the people have a short memory. This is what he had the nerve to say when he was pointedly asked a few days ago if he meant to resign over the issue: “We never spoke of resignations. This is an issue of choices. We could have proceeded and delivered the power plant in 18 months.”

In fact, not even the agreement with China has been finalised yet. According to the minister, this deal will now be happening within the next few weeks.

Would it not be better for the government to stop announcing target dates for the completion of projects?