The government is not living up to its pre-election promises because recurrent expenditure and national debt have increased to proportions that are out of control, the Leader of the Opposition and Labour's spokesman for finance, Charles Mangion, insisted yesterday.

He called for a mid-year review to analyse the financial situation of the country and come up with remedies so that the end-of-year targets set by the government will be reached.

Dr Mangion was commenting on the government's financial performance, which he has criticised as being way off target.

After Dr Mangion called on the government to explain why it had failed to reach its financial targets, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech insisted that one should not be amateurish and speculate about finances in the middle of the financial year.

Dr Mangion replied that if Mr Fenech is confident that by the end of the year the recurrent expenditure will have increased by €63.5 million, despite the fact that in the first six months it had already gone up by €123.2 million, he would like an explanation as to how the minister will cut the €60 million over the next five months to reach his target.

Dr Mangion added that, in 2007, Lawrence Gonzi, who was Finance Minister at the time, had projected that recurrent expenditure would rise by €17.2 million but at the end of the year this had increased to €60.7 million.