MaltaToday | 13 August 2008

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NEWS | Wednesday, 13 August 2008

Government ministers not agreeing over surcharge – Labour

Shadow finance minister Charles Mangion has charged two government ministers with being in disagreement with each other over the reason why government retained its 50% surcharge between January and June of this year.
Mangion is claiming that in a statement issued by IT, Transport and Communications minister Austin Gatt back in November 2007, the minister had said that Enemalta was in a position to guarantee that the surcharge stays at 50% until June 2008 due to oil hedging agreements.
Mangion said that Gatt had stated the decision to retain the surcharge at 50% was not meant as a vote-grabber, but was the result of wise planning.
“Despite this statement, what finance minister Tonio Fenech said in the last few days gives a totally different picture,” Mangion said.
The Labour MP said that while Gatt was trying to give the impression that the surcharge would stay constant at 50% until June 2008 due to the hedging agreements, today Tonio Fenech is saying the surcharge has stayed constant due to the increase in the subsidy government pays to Enemalta.
According to a 4 August, 2008 statement, Fenech said that the government had passed on €37 million in subsidies to Enemalta to keep the surcharge from increasing beyond the 50% mark for the first six months of the year.
“If the hedging agreement so vaunted by Minister Gatt and the budget estimates prepared by Minister Fenech are in agreement, there would have been no reason to give €37 million in subsidies to Enemalta,” Mangion said.
“It is clear that the Nationalist government is caught up in an inconsistency between what one minister and the other said, now that the election has passed. These statements raise a lot of questions on the hedging agreement so vaunted by Minister Gatt in November, and whether this was as successful, while raising doubts on the professionalism of the budget estimates for 2008.”


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