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Warmongers will tell you that the road to success in battle is the ability to wreak havoc and confusion in enemy lines. A disorientated enemy, unsure of itself, cannot offer proper resistance and is bound to falter in the face of the adversary.
This is precisely what Austin Gatt tried to do over the last two weeks when confronted with facts that refuted all that Government has been saying about the cost of oil for Enemalta.
The minister tried to create confusion by quoting oil prices in dollars, making no distinction between Enemalta’s accumulated losses since 1999 and the losses expected in 2005 alone.
It was an easy task for the honourable minister to sow confusion. For months the general public had been conditioned to believe that the rise in crude oil prices would have a devastating impact on Enemalta. The exorbitant increase in the price of crude oil is undeniable. Anybody in his right senses realised the record heights it reached in October when the price hit USD 55 a barrel.
Up until then nobody doubted Government’s apprehension that rising crude oil prices could harm Enemalta. All of us, myself included, believed Austin Gatt when on Radio 101 as early as August, announced that decisions had to be taken to mitigate the negative impact of oil prices.
The groundwork was laid out. Everybody expected a price hike in utility rates to be announced in the budget and when the Prime Minister did pronounce a surcharge of 17 per cent, nobody doubted the intentions behind the tax.
It was after the budget that somebody pointed out to me the difference between crude oil, which Enemalta does not import, and fuel oil, the type actually used to generate electricity. Without knowing what I was going in for I researched the international price of fuel oil and lo and behold a different reality started to emerge from the one drawn up by Government.
The facts spoke for themselves. The international price of fuel oil was cheaper in 2004 than it was in 2003. I am no oil expert, but I do know how to calculate and analyse numbers and after rechecking the information at hand the proof was undeniable.
The fluctuations in the price of fuel oil bore no resemblance to the fluctuations in crude oil prices. Indeed, nobody prior to the budget had ever publically made the distinction between crude oil and fuel oil.
To this shocking revelation Austin Gatt reacted on Radio 101 in the basest of manners, describing this newspaper as Malta’s version of The Sun.
Little did the minister bother to answer questions I sent him and in another attempt to discredit this newspaper last week Gatt published the prices of fuel oil in 2003 and 2004. The table of prices that carried the official seal of the Department of Information was supposed to prove Gatt’s case and rubbish this newspaper once and for all. Funnily enough the prices were quoted in dollars and not Maltese Liri.
A quick check with the exchange rate as determined by the Central Bank revealed that Enemalta would be paying less for its fuel oil in 2004 than it did in 2003.
The Ministry’s latest assertion is that the surcharge is a way of recuperating additional losses in 2005. It is easy to get caught in a misleading game of numbers but if one were to go by the PricewaterhouseCoopers report alone, next year Enemalta will be losing Lm6 million because of what are claimed to be higher oil prices.
With the surcharge expected to rake in Lm7.7 million it is consumers who are being asked to shoulder the burden. It may be a fair way of distributing the burden of additional costs but the whole argument raised by this newspaper is a very simple one: be sincere with people.
In Parliament Gonzi talked of additional losses totalling Lm16 million in 2005. The truth is that the Lm16 million is calculated using 1999 as a benchmark. If Government today feels that the revision of utility tariffs undertaken in 1999 was wrong and put Enemalta in dire straits, it should say so clearly.
Stop fooling around with people’s intelligence. If utility prices are unsustainable today because of the way they were revised downwards in 1999, Government should not ride on the crest of high crude oil prices to justify the surcharge.
The buzz word now is that the surcharge is a ‘temporary’ measure. There is no way in hell that Enemalta’s fuel oil bill will ever reach the established baseline of Lm31 million, at which level the surcharge should disappear completely. This means that consumers are burdened with this new tax for years to come.
People should be spoken to honestly and clearly, dear Austin, and then they will begin to believe this government is engaging in a new way of doing politics.
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