Editorial: A sense of direction needed

The budget for 2025 will be presented by the government on Monday.

Finance Minister will read it out during a special session in Parliament. We hope it will not be a long speech. We understand that, with the country watching, the government wants to make the most of it. But Caruana should cut the fluff as much as possible. People’s attention span is low these days.

The government has already announced that there will be tax cuts. Prime Minister Robert Abela has made it a point to increase the hype. It will be a “historic” moment, he said, raising expectations. It will be the “biggest tax cut in history”, he said on another occasion. The target is the middle class – which makes up the biggest chunk of our society – but the lower sectors of society will not be sidelined, he said.

We also know that the Cost of Living Adjustment increase will be somewhere between €5 and €6 per week, less than half of what workers received last year when inflation was at its peak.

But, aside from this, the government must show that it is giving a direction to the country. Over the past years, the government seems to have lost its way or, worse, is simply managing by crisis. Rather than plan ahead and implement a vision, the government is reacting to changes. Instead of taking the country in the direction it wants, it is just following the flow and trying to close the stable after the horse has bolted.

Time and again, the government has been told that something needs to be done to control the growth in population, and that it should do this by changing the country’s economic model. The government has not listened. It says that it has made the necessary alterations, but it’s clear that they have not worked. The economy is still built on a labour-intensive model, one that requires the importation of foreign workers, which has inevitably led to a scramble to provide them with accommodation and the resultant pressure on the infrastructure.

Time and again, the government has also been told to control its expenditure. The country’s debt has now exceeded €10 billion, and it continues to climb up.

Time and again, the government has also been told that it needs to diversify product Malta, and that while it needs to continue sustaining the tourism industry, measures must be taken for it to remain sustainable.

Time and again, the government has been told to give priority to quality of life, with a better focus on the environment that surrounds us, and a better control on development.

Yet, time and again, the government has continued to ignore these pleas. It has ploughed on as if there is no tomorrow, with no serious plan to take Malta to a better, more solid future.

Another budget will be arriving on Monday.

It should be an opportunity for the government to give Malta a sense of direction.