Practically every time a European institution, agency or a credit rating firm publishes a report about Malta, the government, through a minister or an MP, comes out welcoming whatever good points are made, leaving out almost altogether remarks that are either unpleasant or critical of the administration, the country, or its institutions.

The practice is followed with such consistency that it has become puerile. The latest report from the International Monetary Fund gives full praise to the government where this is due, and also lauds the country’s economic performance, saying that growth remains one of the strongest in Europe.

Prudent policies helped lead to greater structural reforms and contributed to the strengthening of private and public-sector balance sheets. It is most encouraging, too, that the IMF confirms that Malta’s robust economic performance is set to continue. This should help boost further confidence in the country’s ability to move ahead.

The Finance Minister was quick to react favourably to these and other good points made by the IMF but touched only briefly, if at all, on other remarks and issues that call for greater dissection. It also made some very valid warnings, such as when it commented on the need for Malta to build larger buffers as these, it said, would add strength to its fiscal position.

The Finance Minister picked up the remark and said in an official statement that he was pleased to note that the recommendation was already being implemented through the attainment of an annual fiscal surplus. But the IMF team that drew up the report after visiting Malta had obviously been well aware of this. What it meant was that there was need for larger buffers, not just buffers.

It is of course important to keep lowering public debt but the IMF pointedly remarked that the attainment of debt and fiscal targets depended partly on the Individual Investor Programme (IIP) revenues. These, it said, were temporary and hard to predict.

In other words, much as the government is determined to keep raising revenue from the sale of passports, with the Prime Minister going out on sales missions to the four corners of the globe, the underlying message the IMF is putting across here is that it is wrong to rely, even partly, on income from such source.

But perhaps the most important of its observations were those about the need to safeguard the financial system’s integrity, more so now in light of the bad name Malta has earned over allegations about money laundering. Only recently, a Europol financial intelligence report warned of an increase in dirty money passing through Malta, with one crime syndicate running a $2.39 billion money-laundering operation through iGaming.

The IMF rightly feels that effective enforcement of anti-money laundering controls is critical given the fast-growing remote gaming activity and the high demand for the IIP. It is high time for Malta to stop dragging its feet and implement the EU’s 4th directive on anti-money laundering.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial