When I made my assessment of this year’s state budget last November I had written that the government was heading in the right direction but that it was not being bold enough in its economic policy.

One problem that the Gonzi government had was purely semantic. While other governments around the world were first talking of bailing out banks and then of an economic stimulus package, the GonziPN public relations machine had already milked the phrase “economic stimulus” eight months earlier during last year’s electoral campaign. Come budget time and the realisation that it had overspent so heavily during that campaign with Government spending then € 70 million more than budgeted and the deficit back to 2004 levels, the Gonzi Government did not have enough room for maneouver. In the end, it could neither decrease taxes the way it had promised in the run up to the March 8, 2008 General Elections and nor could it give the sort of economic stimulus package which other countries the world over, following Gordon Brown’s example in the UK were doing.

That was the situation then and it is still the situation now.

Followers of this blog have been telling me to update it for some time, but I preferred to see out the Christmas and New Year’s period to see what the Gonzi government would come up with.

The answer is zilch.

I love the Christmas and New Year’s holiday but I have always kept my feet firmly on the ground and never expected that the problems of the passing year will simply disappear, as if by some magic wand, on New Year’s day. And so it is again this year. The economic misdirection of the Gonzi government which characterised 2008 is still here with us in 2009.

Not even the most welcome announcement of bi-partisan agreement on the nomination of Dr George Abela as the next President of Malta has changed that reality. Much like the eagerly awaited Inauguration of Barack Obama last Tuesday has not solved the USA’s economic crisis and made it disappear! Indeed, Obama knew so well what he had to face up to that his team have made much of the fact that they had practically achieved bi-partisan agreement on his economic stimulus package before he was actually sworn in and that this package will be passed by the US Congress by February, 2009.

In the meantime, the Gonzi government continues to believe that all is well in the state of Malta and that critics are simply being unkind and unjust. That may wash with some of its supporters who think that such criticism is coming only from the Labour camp. It does not, however, cut any ice with the more intelligent and free-thinking voters who follow closely what is going on both locally and abroad or with Malta’s business community.

Indeed, the truth is that such criticism is not coming from Labour only. The truth is that it is also the Maltese business community which is asking the Gonzi Government for an economic stimulus package. This is what the newly elected president of the newly merged Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Ms Helga Ellul, did at the first meeting of the Chamber’s Council last week. As The Times reported, “The president of the newly-merged Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry yesterday called for an urgent stimulus package for the private sector."Time is of essence. We need the stimulus package now", Helga Ellul insisted when addressing the first council meeting since the merger.”

It is high time, then, that the Gonzi government listened, if not to Labour, then, at least, to the voice of Malta’s business community.