Muscat defends pro business credentials as guarantee for jobs

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat addressed Labour supporters in Naxxar on Sunday, calling for a national consensus on the creation of jobs together with entrepreneurs at the forefront of private sector investment.

“Let’s not get stuck in the politics of envy. Envy has only brought about unnecessary divisions,” Muscat said in a disquisition of Labour’s pro-business credentials.

“We might not agree with every employer… but it is the owners of factories and entrepreneurs who go to the bank to get credit so that they can invest more. And I want to help those people,” Muscat said, telling his audience that business growth was needed for the creation of jobs.

“We are a pro-business government because we are thinking of creating new niches that can generate jobs and investment, like Malta Marittima which I believe will provide a holistic vision for the expansion of the maritime sector.

“We are pro-business because we are widening the use of private-public partnerships since we don’t want the government extending its activity where it is not needed. We want private companies to enter into partnerships with the government, as we are about to do for the regeneration of lower Fort St Elmo.”

Muscat said his government was also boosting infrastructural investment not only through the construction of better thoroughfares, but also in the coordination of three major hotel expansions in St George’s Bay through a government-led corporation.

Muscat defended his administration’s latest budget, saying Budget 2016 came with no bitter pills to swallow, breaking a tradition of using budgets to extract more revenue from taxpayers.

“It was typically the practice to have the first three years of budgets to levy as many taxes as possible before changing tack in the last budgets ahead of the election.

“But we thought like economists. We focused on growth. We reduced energy bills, income tax, and introduced free childcare. And this was not down to elections, but to put more money in people’s pockets. It is part of a ‘virtuous circle’,” Muscat said.

“Today the people understand our plan, and know these budgets are a long-term plan that has nothing to do with electoral cycles.”

Muscat said that just keeping energy prices as they were since having cut by 25% for residential and commercial users, was guaranteeing €80 million in savings each year.

“This budget keeps rewarding hard work, and gives peace of mind to people who strive… giving €180 in tax cut savings to people is nothing to mock,” Muscat said in a dig at the Opposition. “We are giving social mobility to people and our duty as a government to help people climb the ladder further than their forebears. It’s for this reason that we wanted to have every single taxpayer benefit from a tax cut, and to extend the first-time property buyer concession on tax.”

Muscat also said the 2016 budget was reaping the fruit of the success of Labour’s first budget. “That’s how the cycle works, and today we are reaping these first benefits. We are redistributing the benefits of our first budget, but this is only thanks to economic growth. Without growth we would have the European Union breathing down our necks, telling us to cut pensions and government spending.

“But we are going the other way, because our growth has allowed to effect social justice. We have targeted those social sectors most at risk of poverty and pensioners: we’re the first government to have raised pensions for the first time ever in two years, a measure that will affect well over 12,000 pensioners.”