Updated - Ministry says proposal dropped - The Malta Motorsport Federation said today that it was surprised by a new measure prohibiting the use of vintage and classic vehicles on weekdays.

The measure was announced in a document uploaded to  the Ministry of Finance website yesterday along with the Budget speech. But the Ministry of Finance said later that this was a working document uploaded by mistake. The only decisions which had been taken, it said, were those in the Budget speech, and the proposal on classic cars had been rejected.

The Motorsport Federation itself said later that the Finance Ministry had confirmed to it that the proposal had been rejected.

It said the number of vintage and classic vehicles on the road on weekdays was minimal to negligible, and, in the majority of cases, limited to the owners taking their vehicle out for a drive on a day off from work or those who are pensioners. 

The government, it said, should embrace such vehicles which were attractions recognised worldwide and extensively used in the tourism promos.

“Paying a full license for a vehicle possibly used during weekdays a couple of times a year, on average, is an abusive tax to the community that by and large will also effect charitable institutes as they used these vehicles to create various shows/festivals as an add-ons to their events throughout the year around the island,” it said. 

In a tweet, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said:

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.