Malta's economic woes started before the international financial crisis, Labour MEP Edward Scicluna said yesterday, pointing out that the country lost €600 million in revenue from exports and tourism in 2008.
Speaking during a political debate at the Le Meridien Hotel, in St Julians, Prof. Scicluna said problems started before the 2008 general election and kept getting worse over the year, with exports and tourism revenue dropping by 25 per cent in the last three months of 2008. However, he said, the government tried to give the impression that the financial crisis was not affecting Malta.
A drop in exports was a sign of an impending recession but in his Budget speech in November 2008, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech had projected a 2.4 per cent growth for 2009 when other countries were projecting a decline, he said. Prof. Scicluna said the announcement was made despite a drop in both exports and tourism that started in the first quarter of 2008.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said Malta had managed started to emerge from the recession six months before the government's June target. But Prof. Scicluna disputed this, saying that Malta was still in recession. Economists have argued that the Prime Minister's announcement was in line with international standards that define recessions.
"The Prime Minister never said Malta had entered a recession but now is saying we have got out of it," Labour leader Joseph Muscat said, adding that, last year, an average of seven people lost their jobs every day.
The Nationalist Party reacted to these comments by pointing out that the Employment and Training Corporation had found a job for 11 people every day throughout 2009.
However, Dr Muscat insisted that the "quality of life is deteriorating", referring to the call by Caritas director Mgr Victor Grech to redefine the national poverty line, which stands at an annual income of €5,477.
"Now, even the middle class is feeling the pinch," Dr Muscat said, adding that, while the power of salaries in Europe went up by an average of 2.4 per cent, in Malta this dropped by 0.4 per cent.
However, he said, the government did not take up the PL's suggestion to ease €15 million from the burden imposed through water and electricity tariffs.
"The government came up with all the excuses but there was no excuse to pay €40 million to BWSC (the company awarded the contract for the extension of the Delimara power station)."
Similarly, he said, while the government was constantly asking people to tighten their belts and the government did not find enough money to accept more students at the Malta Institute of Art, Science and Technology, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech spent almost €200,000 on new offices.
Speaking about healthcare, Dr Muscat pointed out that the waiting list for orthopaedic operations had almost tripled in the time Dr Gonzi has been Prime Minister. There were just over 4,600 people waiting for an orthopaedic operation in 2004 but this had gone up to over 12,200 last year.
Referring to the recent announcement that this had been cut by 49 per cent, Dr Muscat said people were fed up and had decided to fork out the money to do the operation privately.
"When you put a person on a waiting list, you are not postponing the problem but exacerbating it," he said, adding that such people became an added expense on the state because they needed medication and treatment.
The Health Ministry said in reaction it was not true that waiting lists had been cut because people resorted to surgery privately but because the name of some patients appeared on the waiting list more than once.
Dr Muscat said the PL wanted to anticipate European directives about patient mobility and start giving a predetermined time within which they would have to wait for an operation. "It will not be easy but neither is it a solution to leave people on waiting lists," he said.
Dr Muscat criticised the way the government had planned the oncology centre within the grounds of Mater Dei Hospital, the cost of which grew from €24 million in 2008 to €48 million now.