A marketing spree to promote the Budget cost the Nationalist administration a staggering €750,000 in its last full year in office, according to figures tabled in Parliament.
The money spent in 2012 equalled the funds allocated to the National Commission for Disabled Persons in that same year.
It also represented almost a three-fold increase on the amount used to promote the Budget in the previous year.
But the increase in expenditure mimicked the same trend witnessed in 2007 – another pre-election year – when the expenditure to promote the Budget reached €213,759, almost a five-fold increase on the preceding year.
The list of payments covers various services and activities linked to Budget promotion including advertisements, information booklets and public meetings.
The information was tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, who was answering a parliamentary question by government spokesman Carmelo Abela.
An analysis of the figures reveals how the former government had only spent a modest €2,235 publicising its budgetary measures back in 2004.
The relatively low figure, however, increased to €18,000 in 2005 and again to €45,000 in 2006.
The run-up to the 2008 election then saw that legislature’s largest jump in promotion costs, with the PN government spending just shy of a quarter of a million euros to publicise its financial measures.
The same trend was evident in the PN’s last five years in office. In an administration characterised by internal unrest, the government’s Budget promotion costs hovered around the €250,000 mark until it eventually skyrocketed to three quarters of a million euros in 2012.
In February Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had told Parliament the government spent €210,661 promoting its 2014 budget.
This, he said, included all the costs for printing, production, advertising, and even billboards.
Some of the billboards later transpired to be illegal and last month Dr Muscat admitted the government used them despite these having been issued with enforcement notices from the planning authority.