I refer to the article ‘Mcast loses EU funds, cancels tender’ (May 11).

The article gives a very unfair impression of the manner in which Mcast managed to use EU funds during the last programming period. For the record, Mcast disbursed 98.55 per cent of EU funds allocated to it during the programming period ending in 2015 for a total of €59 million.

This can only be considered as a very high disbursement rate and was achieved through the hard work of Mcast staff as well as the cooperation and support of other government departments and the local managing authority of EU funds, particularly during the last three years of this programming period.

These EU funds were used in particular to build phase one of the new campus project and to undertake extensive curricular revisions of its programmes, among other projects. It is extremely unfair of the Times of Malta to highlight one relatively minor tender in the manner done in this article without placing this within the whole perspective that Mcast successfully used 98.55 per cent of EU funds allocated to it.

The particular tender mentioned in the article had to be issued at the end of the programming period and was also delayed due to an appeal raised by one of the contractors. For the record, the tender referred to in the article had a value of €70,910, including VAT, which amounts to 0.12 per cent of the EU funds allocated to Mcast.

Editorial note: Mcast was contacted about the cancelled tender prior to publication of the article but very little information was furnished, certainly not what Mr Cachia writes about above.