Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said today that the power station extension would save the country €500,000 in power generation costs per week and this would make a difference to electricity bills.
Speaking at a political conference, Mr Fenech said that it was not the country's wellbeing that was behind the current ‘deceitful' PL campaign against the power station extension.
He said that what the Labour Party wanted was to blemish the government and to bring about a situation where the Marsa power station remained opened and then Malta would be fined by the EU. It was a situation which would also see Malta suffer more power cuts.
Mr Fenech said the power station extension needed to be completed as soon as possible, because economic growth depended on it. How could investment come to Malta if investors were not assured of a reliable power supply?
Mr Fenech defended the government's choice for the power station contract. The auditor, he said, had shown that there had been no corruption.
The new plant, he said, would mean cleaner energy, and tariffs would be 30% lower than had other technology been selected. Power from the selected equipment would cost 8c per unit while the Bateman equipment which was rejected would have exceeded 11c. Did Dr Muscat want the people to pay more?
It was useless arguing that the government should have opted for a gas-fired power station when Malta did not have the necessary infrastructure, including the huge tanks which would have been necessary.
Far from having chosen equipment which harmed the environment, the government had chosen equipment which would ‘capture' emissions - the flyash which would then be exported in a manner which was common in other countries.
Mr Fenech said the auditor had pointed to administrative shortcoming in the tender procedures, and these were being addressed.
But the government would go ahead with the extension because it would give Malta cleaner energy and security of supply.
"This is the time to move ahead and to complete this extension by 2011 so that Marsa power station can be closed - Marsa is the monument of what the PL did for power generation in Malta," Dr Fenech said.
PL REACTION
The Labour Party in a reaction said the minister was trying to deceive. It said the auditor had reported that:
“The economics based on more recent prices might tilt the balance in favour of Bateman rather than BWSC.”
This meant, it said, that the government's choice for the power station extension meant the people had to pay more from their pockets and through their health. It would have been better, the party said, had the minister explained how Enemalta would dispose of its many tons of flyash.