A budget to appease

The budget for 2024 that was presented by Finance Minister Clyde Caruana was mostly an exercise of social increases aimed to uplift people at the bottom rungs of society, but it did little to expose what the government has in mind for the future.

It is a short-term budget, which dishes out the goodies to bring about an immediate feel-good factor which the government lost in the past months, but is concerning because it does not plan ahead and lacks the vision an administration should have as it guides a nation.

Caruana did not shy away from describing it as a socialist budget, and in this sense he is right because it seeks to hand out more and more social benefits to pensioners, families, low-income workers and others in need. But, rather than provide them or seek to provide them with opportunities to move up the social rungs, it just gives them hand-outs to keep them quiet.

It is a very socialist way of doing things – “you do not need to do anything, the government is there to provide for you”. That is the general thought behind what the government presented last Monday.

Prime Minister Robert Abela described it as a budget drawn up by the people for the people, a reference to what he said were a string of consultation meetings that were held in the weeks preceding the budget.

But, judging by the reactions of the constituted bodies, they were not too happy about it. Only the General Workers’ Union praised it from top to bottom, while other unions and employer bodies lamented that the budget, while rich in social measures, which, as we all know, are paid for by the taxpayer, lacks long-term vision. It’s a budget for today, but thinks little about tomorrow.

At a time when the world is in turmoil, as two wars rage on in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, which follow a global pandemic, the country needs an administration that plans ahead with a view to overcoming the difficulties and challenges of these times. But the budget presented on Monday did little to set our minds at rest that there is a plan for the coming years.

All it did was attempt to create a smokescreen made up of social hand-outs to calm down a situation which, for the government, is going out of hand following a string of blows it was hit with via the disability benefits fraud, the driving licences racket and the three hospitals’ judgment.

There was no plan mentioned, for example, as to how the government intends to tackle what has become a huge problem – that of an exaggerated rise in population which was encouraged by policies Labour introduced in 2013 but which, in 10 years, have changed the country for the worse.