The government is allocating a record €100 million for the roads sector, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna announced in the Budget Speech on Monday.

The allocation follows the setting up, earlier this year, of Infrastructure Malta, a government agency which will oversee the rebuilding of all of Malta's roads within seven years, as promised in the Labour electoral programme.

Prof Scicluna said the government also plans to issue a call for public-private partnerships for the building of car parks in various localities. The idea is to turn vacant private lots into public car parks, especially in localities where parking is scarce. 

Existing schemes related to transport, such as tax exemptions on electric vehicles, scrapping vehicles, converting cars to run on LPG and incentives to encourage motorcycle use will all be retained.

Vehicle registration refund

The minister also announced that the VAT refund on car registrations will be completed next year with an outlay of €4.9 million, for a total €25 million in five years. Over the next year, those who registered their vehicles in 2008 will get cheques in the post.