Finance Minister Edward Scicluna. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

The greatest number of taxes in any one budget was 4,000 and this when the Nationalist government had introduced VAT, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said yesterday.

Winding up the debate in its second reading on the Budget Measures Implementations Bill, the upbeat minister rebutted Oppo­sition claims that he had introduced 400 taxes “from the womb to the tomb” in the last budget.

These were merely additional fees, sometimes of €1, to discourage abuses of governmental administrative procedues, he said. These fees were last increased in 2000.

Economic growth was 2.5 per cent for the last quarter of 2013, increasing every quarter during 2014 until it reached four per cent in Q4.

The Opposition was trying to mislead in all of its arguments in order to distract people from the positivity emanating from the Budget. It was not true that the government had increased taxation on mobile top-ups by four per cent, he said. It was the previous administration that had increased it by three per cent. This administration topped it up by a further one per cent only.

It was a figment of the Opposition’s imagination that the increase in employment figures had been fuelled by public procurement. The figures for all sectors showed that marked increases had been registered by the private sector.

Prof. Scicluna also rejected Opposition claims that the wholesale and retail sector was passing through lean times, saying that the number employees there had increased by 485.

There had been a four per cent rise in the workforce for women aged between 25 to 54 and an increase of three per cent for women over 54.

Investment in 2013 amounted to 14.4 per cent, and this had grown to 18.8 per cent in 2014. Malta’s debt for 2014 was reduced to 68.5 per cent, below the 70 per cent benchmark.

This meant that 2014 was a very successful year and that the Budget was a positive one – far different from what others had ever been.

The Bill was passed by 36 votes for and 29 against after the Opposition called for a division. Minister Evarist Bartolo and Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg were absent, while Nationalist MP Kristy Debono (who has just had a baby girl, Serena Dawn) and Emanuel Mallia (PL) were paired.

The House also approved, by the same margin, the financial estimates of the Occupational Health and Safety Authority for 2015.