AN leader Dr Josie Muscat yesterday said that the party’s manifesto on industry and economy is based on 10 important concepts.
“Competitivity is one of the crucial aspects. If this country has not yet realised, we need to compete in a world where it is becoming more difficult and sophisticated. If we lose our competitiveness, this country shall sink and this time we cannot say that it’s the Queen’s fault. Now we have to lead alone,” said Muscat
He was speaking during a meeting with the Malta Employer’s Association, which yesterday formally presented its memorandum on Sustainability, Competitiveness and Proactivity to Azzjoni Nazzjonali.
Another aspect Muscat mentioned was bureaucracy. “None of the parties is attacking this issue as much as AN. We are insisting that the Government should reduce its costs. The capital expenditure must be reduced so that we can finally have a budget with a surplus by the year 2011. Instead, the Government has offered a budget where the national expenditure increased to 3.5% compared to 2007. This expenditure can be lessened within the two years 2008/9, if we amalgamate the VAT department with the tax and social security departments with ETC. We are also saying that the number of ministers should not be more than seven. Furthermore we are proposing to have a rationalisation of the local councils, an increase in COLA which should be partially proportional to the rate of inflation, and partially to the national productivity rate: particularly with those who are on the minimum wage and for those who do not form part of any trade unions.”
All this should minimise bureaucracy, in AN’s view.
“We should give fiscal incentives so that private medical insurance as this would ease certain burdens the Government is facing,” Muscat continued. “There should be a revision of the social security to track who genuinely is in need and eliminate those who are abusing from the system.”
Other highlighted concepts were meritocracy and accountability.
Once again, Muscat confirmed that “AN is in favour of flat tax rate, after we would have increased the workers’ minimum wage. Tax would not be paid if a worker’s salary does not exceed Lm6,000. This system worked perfectly in other EU countries like Croatia. They had a good economic growth.”
Muscat concluded that “the economical problems in this country arise because of lack of competitivity. Malta placed 23 out of the 27 EU member countries in 2007. The public sector is too big and it is absorbing too many resources (34% of Malta’s workers) on non-productive work. There is lack of diversity in the economy. Economic growth last year came from two sectors: financial services and the gaming/internet sector.”