Nationalist MP Chris Said this evening called on the National Audit Office to investigate the 2016 budget variations as listed in the supplementary estimates recently approved by parliament.
Speaking in parliament during the adjournment, Dr Said noted that the Office of the Prime Minister’s travel budget of €640,000 increased by €1,600,000 to €2.24 million.
The same OPM spent €480,000 in information services over a budget of €520,000 to one million euros.
Dr Said said that the OPM spent €6.2 million over the sum of €3 million earmarked for CHOGM and €4 million for the EU-Africa summit when there was no budget apportioned for this.
The funding for the Ministry for Education and Employment overrun by €11 million, including an increase of €1.5 million in the personal emoluments vote for the Education Ministry, which originally was €3.3 million.
He said the then ETC (now Jobsplus) had a budget of €11 million, which increased by a further €7.5 million. He asked whether a substantial part of the sum went for the GWU Community Works Scheme.
Turning to the Social Dialogue Ministry, Dr Said said the budgets for personal emoluments and travel abroad were twice that was originally voted for. The International Membership budget increased by €11,000 to €191,000
The Economy Ministry spent 10 times the original budget for promotion from €45,000 to €225,000. The Contractual Services budget from €107,000 went up to €2.5 million. Professional services cost 20 times more than budgeted while that for Investment Incentives shot from €12 to €21 million. Was this part of the sum guarantee for Crane Currencies to open shop in Malta? n
The difference in the expenditure in the professional services vote at the then Health and Energy Ministry was from €60,000 to €885,000. The Projects Malta vote was over-expanded from €1.1 to €3.2 million.
The votes for Contractual Services bythe Family Ministry shot by €6 to €19 million.
The Tourism Ministry’s professional services vote show from €9,000 to one million euros. The Malta Tourism Authority had a budget of €40.5 million but spent €15.8 more to a total of €56.3 million.
Personal emoluments shot from €2.5 to €3 million, while the Film Industry Incentives budget from €6 million increased to €16 million.
Turning to the Office of the President, Dr Said pointed out that the €575,000 budget for utilities, travel, hospitality and equipment was increased by €875,000, travel increased from €165,000 to €495,000. The Hospitality Budget of €100,000 shot to €250,000.
Dr Said described as obscene the payment of €16.5 million to Vitals Global Healthcare.