The government has denied it is reducing the budget allocation for sports and local councils, as claimed earlier today by the Labour Party.

Addressing a news conference this afternoon, PL spokesman for sports Chris Agius said the projected budget for the Sports College project will go down from €100,000 to €70,000 as a result of budget cuts, PL spokesman Chris Agius said.

He said that the scholarships fund was also being reduced from €120,000 to €100,000, that for sports tourism form €350,000 to €300,000, that for sports activities in Gozo by 10 per cent.

But Sports Parliamentary Secretary Clyde Puli said the government is actually increasing investment in sports and this year it will be passing on an €8 million package of assistance to sports organisations,

The opposition’s analyses was superficial because the vote for sports this year was not just increased, it also went further than the vote for the sports ministry and included several sports initiatives within the ministry though several schemes and other projects spread with diverse ministeries.

€100,000 for scholarships in sports were being given for the first time this year so it was not true that there was any cut over last year’s amount, which was nil.

The same could be said for the sports college for which  €70,000 were being allocated for the first time. This money only had to cover the wages of the administrative head and coashes and administrative expenses for October to December because the infrastructure was complete and the wages of teachers and educational material came out of the budget for education.

The Opposition failed to mention the different schemes for children, young adults and sportsmen and women, a number of which were covered by the votes of other ministries. These included the removal of the registration tax on sports vehicles.

Duting the PL's news conference, Stefan Buontempo said the cuts were also affecting local councils who would be seeing a cut of nearly €1 million.

Funds for local councils were already relatively low, they were being given more responsibilities and they complained they did not have enough funds.

The budget for councils' special initiatives was also being reduced by €300,000

But the Ministry responsible for Local Councils said in a statement that in spite of what Dr Buontempo said, facts showed that the financial allocation for council was being increased.

The government was in fact this year allocating €1,490,000 more than it did last year, as could be seen from the table below.