PM Robert Abela's press conference after members of Cabinet were sworn in

Prime Minister Robert Abela held a press conference at Castille following the swearing in ceremony of his newly appointed Cabinet. "The fiscal targets achieved well ahead of schedule will lead to implementing an ambitious work program for the benefit of the Maltese Our country has achieved its fiscal targets well ahead of schedule with a strong team that will continue to lead Malta ever further forward with the implementation of the INT Malta work program. This was stated by Prime Minister Robert Abela at a press conference in the Auberge de Castille in connection with the fact that the European Commission confirmed that our country has achieved its fiscal targets after managing to lower the deficit compared to Gross Domestic Product below 3%. In fact, the deficit has dropped to 2.2% while the European average is 3.1%. Now the European Commission has formally written to the European Council to remove Malta from the excessive deficit procedure, so that our country was the only country to be removed from this procedure and has the best economic growth for this year and next year in Europe. This is according to European Commission experts. In the same press conference also addressed by Finance Minister Clyde Caruana, Prime Minister Robert Abela pointed out that in 2020 he had a choice before him when the pandemic broke out, that of getting rich and responding with austerity or investing in people. He chose the second option and has remained so to this day to provide certainty, stability and peace of mind. Dr Abela stressed that thanks to the wisdom in managing finances, the national debt as a proportion of national wealth has continued to decrease and the target is that in this legislature that has just begun, it will drop to 40%. “The Maltese and Gozitan people know who to trust, a competent, effective and credible Government”, pointed out the Prime Minister ahead of the fourth consecutive historic mandate that the political movement he leads has received. He explained that he has a strong team to lead a Government for the good of the country and will implement the work programme to, among others, with a strong fiscal position that is expected to continue to improve; increase maternity and paternity leave, further incentivise first-time buyers, continue to increase pensions, give a Super Bonus of €1,000 per year for all workers, invest in the best science and technology for IVF, help parents with therapies for their disabled children, give a kick-start to young people who have started working or opened a start-up and turn White Rocks and Manoel Island into national parks, among others. In Castile, Prime Minister Robert Abela also pointed out the fact that Eurostat confirmed that Malta is the country in the Eurozone with the lowest inflation rate. This is thanks to the progressive and social policies of this administration. “In the last few hours, the Government has been given the best certificate for its work and therefore we look to the future with optimism”, said Prime Minister Robert Abela. Minister for Finance Clyde Caruana stressed how crucial the wise decisions taken by the Government in recent years were for our country to be the only country out of eight in the European Union to have reached these fiscal targets. He explained that despite the European Commission giving our country four years to reduce the deficit below 3%, this milestone was reached in just two years. He said that while other European countries are seeing their deficits increase, in Malta the opposite is happening and our country’s deficit will continue to decrease year after year. So much so that the European Commission is anticipating that by 2027, there will be 13 countries in the excessive deficit procedure. The Minister also explained how over the past few years, our country’s deficit has decreased by an average of 1.3 percentage points per year. For the coming years, the Government is planning to continue reducing the deficit by 0.6 percentage points in order to continue to compensate for the impacts coming from abroad and also to implement the strong electoral manifesto that the Government presented over the past few weeks". Photo: OPM