As Sir Robert Armstrong, the then head of the British Civil Service said later of his evidence before an Australian government inquiry into whether to permit the publication of a book about the workings of the British Secret Service, “I must admit I was economical of the truth”.
I wish our government would stop wasting taxpayers’ money on all these advertisements. They do nothing to instil confidence, indeed quite the reverse.
The tendering process in Malta is very strange. For example, out of three bids for the privatisation of the Msida Marina none was published but one was picked as the “preferred bid”. This bid has now been accepted but we have no idea whether it was, in fact, the most beneficial one for the country and for the financial viability of any possible future marina development. What are the parameters for selecting a preferred bid and why is it all so secret?
On a different tack, why is the National Statistics Office basing its figures for the state of the residential property market on the asking prices as advertised to determine whether the actual selling prices are rising or falling? Without accurate figures it is impossible for would-be sellers or developers or purchasers to take a realistic view of investing in these difficult times. Actual selling prices are available from the Tax Office which has to be informed of the details at the time of each sale completion. Statistics based on those figures, including whether the number of sales is rising or falling, are desperately needed. Without such information the government, lenders and purchasers are ignorant of the true facts.
One only has to look at the disastrous state of Ireland. There, everyone assumed that prices could only rise, thus resulting in gross overproduction of new housing, much of which is now standing derelict, the developers bankrupt in company with the banks that provided financing, not to mention the people who bought property in these developments and now find themselves living in property which is unsaleable even at a fraction of the amount they paid/borrowed.
Their government did nothing to avert the onset of this disastrous situation and perhaps ours is falling into the same elephant trap.
One more “statistic” which puzzles me is the current number of vacant dwellings on these islands. A few years ago it was said to be 20,000, early this year it was said to be 40,000 and now they are talking about 60,000.
If these figures are anywhere near the truth then the country is already in a parlous state.
Perhaps the goverment authorities involved in tendering and in statistics might be good enough to inform us, without recourse to “economy of the truth”.