The European Commission is set to give its formal assessment on the 2014 Budget on November 22, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said yesterday.

Addressing a news conference at St George’s Square in Valletta, Prof. Scicluna said finance ministers from the eurozone countries would be presented with the commission’s report on their respective budgets.

Though the feedback so far had been positive, the possibility that the Commission would not be convinced of Malta’s plan to reduce the deficit to 2.1 per cent by the end of next year was still there, the minister said. Should that be the case the Commission would ask the Maltese government to take corrective measures.

According to the latest Commission forecasts issued before the Budget, Malta will continue to have an excessive deficit for the next two years. While the Government is projecting to end this year with a 2.7 per cent deficit, the Commission’s forecast is of 3.4 per cent. Asked about these discrepancies, Prof. Scicluna said it only takes a variance of 0.6 per cent or €40 million to go off the mark.

He added that the Government was conscious of this risk and so the onus would be on the ministries not to overspend.

“If we are capable of sticking to our targets we will be OK come the end of next year,” said Prof. Scicluna.

On unemployment, he said he was not alarmed by the gradual increase in recent months saying that the benchmark must be the overall rate. He said that in this respect, unemployment had gone down since the end of last year.

He also fended off criticism that the Budget lacked measures to create jobs, saying it was important to have the right infrastructure, to encourage business growth and not be shackled by bureaucracy.

Prof. Scicluna said EU rules on state aid limited the Government’s manoeuvrability to give grants or incentives to lure foreign investors, and so this route was not likely to pay dividends.

On the other hand, he said the Government was trying to look beyond the European Union, to diversify the economy.