When I got home from Parliament last Monday, my husband asked the annual stock question: "So, what's in the Budget Box?" To which I replied: "You see, there's this enormous elephant, which the Finance Minister ignored completely." "Come again," he volleyed back at me impatiently. Seeing that 10 o'clock at night is not the time to speak in metaphors, I answered plainly: "Not much which won't be drowned by the utility tariffs."

The Finance Minister droned on and on, about every subject under the sun - had this been a corporate presentation, the speech writer would now be registering as unemployed - avoiding the essential utility tariffs issue, thus rendering the whole budget exercise rather ineffective, especially in the short to medium term, since these tariffs will bog down a lot of what has been presented.

The fact that this critical factor was not addressed shows that - to continue with the analogy in my last piece here - the presentation of the national Budget has been rendered to a mere yearly spectacle where it is treated more as a one-night stand rather than a serious affair. We know that we have big problems with regard to competitiveness and we also know that the increase in utility rates will continue to have a great impact on this. Yet, what this increase will be was kept secret on Budget Day, so the thunderclouds have yet to break.

Among other things, this utilities price hike will also mean further loss of employment. While the government must concentrate on getting people into work, it must also focus on stopping people falling out of work, which is what is bound to continue happening as things stand. Many small businesses, especially, are already finding it difficult to carry on with the utility rates as they are now. How will they cope with the next surge? All this uncertainty surely doesn't help investment, which., in turn, is critical to seeing us out of the recession.

It is also a fact that the utility tariffs will have a big effect on inflation, which will make it even more difficult for people to estimate what they could spend and what they need to put aside, not for a rainy day, but for when the bills arrive.

So unemployment is on the increase, growth in household disposable income is slowing down, utility rates keep spiraling up, while the production of energy remains inefficient. A rather dangerous concoction.

Surely, it is useless pointing out that the government could stock up when the international price of oil is down because we are informed that "they know best" and a purchasing exercise is depicted as a mammoth task that is beyond us to understand. In the meantime, families and businesses fall victims to the gross mishandling of the corporations providing the very expensive services.

We are kept in the dark on this issue, in spite of the fact that Enemalta enjoys a monopoly in the energy sector and the government has a duty to be transparent on this matter. When we ask, government speakers come up with the age-old excuse that they cannot give us the information as this is of a commercial nature. But surely businesses need to know what these services are going to cost them so that they could plan ahead. So do all the citizens who need to plan their family budgets.

As safely predicted in my last piece here, "the explosives - which affect our daily lives - concealed on Budget Day" will be "foisted on us on every other day of the year". And here we are, true to custom: we will know what we will be paying for electricity and water consumption on some other ordinary day soon but not on Budget Day. It doesn't matter that perpetuating instability, uncertainty and insecurity is a good way of compounding the predicament many people find themselves in.

So is this all? No, but this utility rates bomb has by far eclipsed all else as it affects most levels and sectors of society and business. True, I could have commented on what the Finance Minister said last year and what actually materialised but what's the point of looking back on how, for instance, he predicted that for this year the deficit will be €99 million but will actually be €258 million, even though capital expenditure is €44 million less than projected? The minister had even gone as far as speaking of a Budget surplus by 2011.

The international downturn was already with us last year when the minister was making these wide of the mark predictions, so that's no excuse.

The numbers obviously underline the parlous state of our public finances. Still, the utility tariffs issue is the elephant in the room, which the minister refused to mention in his Budget speech, even though it affects employment and competitiveness. It affects stability and planning. It shows us that we still have a lot of heavy lifting to do. But what we need first and foremost is a candid class of politician.

Dr Dalli is Labour shadow minister for the public service and government investments.