The best way to protect families is to protect jobs – Economy Minister

If we truly want to protect the middle class, our families, we must protect jobs, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri said on this week’s session of Indepth.

The main topic of discussion during an interview between Schembri and The Malta Independent’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Neil Camilleri was the €900 million mini budget that was announced last Monday, which is aimed at helping businesses get back on their feet as they reopen after months of being shut down. He responded to criticism that not enough was done for families by saying that the most important thing is to protect jobs.

Schembri explained that, in reality, this is not a budget but a recovery plan, so it can be considered to be the fourth financial aid package.

This plan received positive feedback overall but it was criticised by the Opposition, which felt that there were not enough incentives to help families and the general public.

Asked for his opinion on this criticism, Schembri promptly shot it down and attributed it to the Opposition’s “populist proposals” during the pandemic.

“God forbid that we had listened to the Opposition’s populist proposals during this pandemic, such as their call for a total lockdown. It would have caused companies to go bust and people to lose their jobs, while our country’s finances would have reached the levels experienced during Nationalist administrations, which would truly be a crisis,” he said.

He explained that the easiest thing for the government to do was to give everyone what they need, like the Opposition suggested, but this would not have been sustainable in the long run, as every action has its repercussions.

For this reason, the government decided on a targeted approach to help the hardest hit sectors and get the economic wheel turning once more.

“It is useless to talk about how much you would like to help the public without having anything to give them in the first place,” Schembri said. “In order to continue to implement sustainable measures for families in general in the future, as we have done in the past seven years, we need to have some sort of economic growth.”

He believes that this growth will only come about if the government instigates activity within the business sector, which is exactly what this recovery plan aims to do.

The full interview, including analysis of specific measures like the reduction in the price of utility bills and fuel, as well as the current situation at Air Malta, can be viewed on