Andrew Carnegie, one of America’s wealthiest philanthropists, once wrote: “It is more difficult to give money away intelligently than it is to earn it in the first place.”

Such words of wisdom are not lost on our Finance Minister who is seemingly headed for a balanced budget next year.

Itself that would certainly be no mean achievement, let alone were an alluring surplus one to beckon for 2017.

EU pressure might well tempt the minister to bring down even further our sovereign debt’s ratio to the GDP.

However, an attractive com-bination of socio-politico-economic factors would likely veer his vision in the direction of more ‘giving away’ from the planned budgetary surplus: economics clamouring for increasing infrastructural investment (e.g. roads), and sociology for a more generous redistribution towards the needy.

An optimal recipe for retaining the reins of government in 2018.