Transport Minister Joe Mizzi will not publish the public transport concession contract signed with Spanish company Autobuses de Leon just yet.

After going on record saying he will table the contract in Parliament “on the first opportunity available” he now says it will be done “at the opportune moment” and is refusing to make the agreement available for public scrutiny immediately.

The agreement will see subsidies triple from the €10 million a year, which used to be given to former operators Arriva, to €29 million to the Spanish company. Yet, the government continues to dodge requests for the contract’s publication.

Mr Mizzi made his latest announcement about the publication of the agreement when he was replying to a parliamentary question by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi on Tuesday.

In his three-page long reply, Mr Mizzi lambasted the opposition over its stand on the matter and Arriva over the service it rendered.

Addressing a press conference earlier this month, on the occasion of the soft launch of the public transport service by the Spanish company, Mr Mizzi promised he would “table the contract in Parliament when it reconvened” (after the Christmas recess).

Parliament sat again on January 12 but the contract was not tabled.

Asked last week whether the minister had a change of heart and to say why he had not yet published the contract as promised, a spokeswoman for Minister Mizzi invited this newspaper to wait until last Tuesday because, she added, he would be answering a parliamentary question on the matter. Still, the agreement was not published.

Insisting he did not forget what he promised, Mr Mizzi said in his written reply that “the contract will be published at the opportune moment”, without giving any time frame. He said the former PN government had taken 11 months to table in the House of Representatives the contract with Arriva.

Asked again yesterday to say why the minister had changed his plans to publish the contract, a spokesman did not reply.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat referred to the publication of agreements earlier this month. Asked why the government did not publish all the documents related to the deal with China’s Shanghai Electric on the sale of Enemalta, he said his government had published far more documents than the previous administration had. He said the Arriva contract was never published.

It later turned out the contract had in fact been tabled in Parliament on October 3, 2011.