The Infrastructure Ministry this evening accused Labour leader Joseph Muscat of political hypocrisy for having claimed that no consultation had taken place before the surcharge was raised.

The ministry said the surcharge was raised in terms of a formula agreed with the social partners in 2005 and nothing had changed.

Dr Muscat earlier today wrote to the social partners asking them for their suggestions and views on how Malta should tackle high energy costs. He also criticized the government for not consulting anyone before the surcharge was raised (see separate story).

The ministry also explained that were it not for forward buying, consumers would now be charged a surcharge of 140 percent. Thanks to forward buying, the surcharge should be 115 percent, but government subsidies had scaled that back to 95 percent.

The ministry said Enemalta had forward buying contracts running into next year at an oil price which is 40 percent lower than the current oil price. But these were definite contracts, and once they expired and new ones were negotiated, oil prices would still be rising.

The ministry said it was disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Labour Party which was acting like it did not know that oil prices were rising at an alarming rate.

While the MLP was arguing against raising the surcharge, the fact was that subsidies still had to be funded by the people’s taxes. And whereas everybody was required to pay taxes, the surcharge and the power tariffs were charged according to how much one consumed.

While Dr Muscat was pretending that consultation with him could make a difference to anybody, the government was reiterating its commitment to conduct the same extensive consultation before revising the tariffs as it had done before introducing the surcharge, the ministry said.