The Malta Stock Exchange share index at the end of each quarter last year registered gains over the previous quarter.

Since the Labour Party, led by Joseph Muscat, was elected to government in March last year Nationalist Party officials have been trying to discredit the victorious party.

Simon Busuttil and his friends have been trying to deflect the attention of the Maltese public from their record electoral defeat and their party’s financial woes by portraying a situation in which post-PN Malta everything is gloom and doom, the economy is in dire straits and investor confidence is rock bottom.

But is this the case or are the PN spin doctors trying to deceive the Maltese public?

I will not reply to this question myself but see what the financial markets have to say about the matter. Financial markets have no political allegiances and their prime motive is profit. Accordingly, they give a very objective picture of a country’s economy.

If we look at Malta Government bond yields we see that, over the past year, these have decreased across all tenors. In fact, two-year yields have decreased from 1.35 per cent to 0.93 per cent; five-year yields dropped from 2.40 per cent to two per cent; 10-year yields have decreased from 3.83 per cent to 3.22 per cent and 20-year yields have gone down from 4.89 per cent to 4.55 per cent. This means that the prices of such bonds, which move inversely with yields, have increased.

Accordingly, Malta Government debt has become more attractive to investors.

Secondly, and, perhaps, more importantly, it means that investors are willing to lend the Maltese Government at lower rates of interest. They are ready to do this because confidence in the government and its economic management has increased. This is quite different from the way the PN is portraying our economy.

Another indicator of a country’s economic well-being is the stock indices.

A stock index is a method of measuring the value of a section of the stock market. It is computed from the prices of selected stocks (typically a weighted average). It is a tool used by investors and financial managers to describe the market and to compare the return on specific investments.

If one were to analyse the Malta Stock Exchange share index at every last day of each quarter of 2013 it will transpire that this index registered gains at every quarter compared to the previous quarter. In the last quarter of 2013, the index recorded a 7.83 per cent gain on the previous quarter. This increase was much higher than that recorded by Slovenia and Slovakia, two other EU member states that joined together with Malta and which have also adopted the euro.

Is this economic gloom? The answer is no.

Another vote of confidence in the economic management of Muscat’s government came from renowned rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

In its January report, it affirmed Malta’s rating. Not only has Standard & Poor’s affirmed Malta’s outlook as stable but has stated that the country’s new government has started its legislative session with a long-standing reform agenda, particularly in the energy sector.

This rating agency also stated that 2013 economic growth exceeded its forecast.

All this shows how much the PN hierarchy is deceiving the Maltese public when it continuously portrays Malta as facing an economic collapse due to present government’s economic mismanagement. This is far from the truth.

The government is restructuring the economy to make it more competitive and address future challenges

The financial markets are approving the economic policies of the Labour government and Standard & Poor’s confirmed this. This reputed international rating agency went as far as saying that it believes that the restructuring in the energy sector is a positive signal that the government will tackle other long-standing structural issues such as pension reform, the low female labour participation rate and the supply gaps in higher skilled positions.

This is clearly a government that is restructuring the economy to make it more competitive and address future challenges. Clearly, the government has the approval of the financial markets and of the Maltese electorate.

Silvio Schembri is a Labour MP.