Clyde Caruana calls Alex Borg ‘financially illiterate' over €1 billion claim

Alex Borg’s claim that the government had borrowed €1 billion in the month before the election was called shows his “financial illiteracy” and “amateurism”, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said on Thursday.

Caruana was responding to a claim made by Borg at a party meeting on Wednesday evening, in which he said that Malta had borrowed €1 billion between March and April, citing European Central Bank figures.

“Just a few days before the election was called, the government borrowed €1 billion in the span of a month,” Borg told party supporters at a meeting in Naxxar.

PN doubled down on this claim on Thursday, accusing the government of trying to hide this by instructing the National Statistics Office to refrain from publishing figures “under the pretence of observing the day of reflection”

“Abela treated the people’s money as his own in order to win the election at all costs. The taxes you paid, which should have gone towards health and pensions, were spent on favours,” PN said.

Meanwhile, PN finance spokesperson Adrian Delia said the European Central Bank figures revealed the rising debt that Caruana had allegedly tried to hide.

“Our country borrowed €1 billion in April,” Delia said. “The finance minister hid this from us”.

When contacted by Times of Malta, Clyde Caruana rubbished the claim, saying Borg “clearly does not know what he is talking about”.

“Malta did not spend a billion euros in debt in a single month. In fact, the country does not even spend that amount in an entire year,” he said.

A press release issued by the finance ministry in April shows that the government had received almost €900 million from retail and wholesale investors, of which only €500 million were accepted.

It is standard practice for oversubscribed amounts to be turned away.

“At first, I thought this was simple carelessness. But increasingly, it looks like amateurism, saying whatever sounds good without checking whether it is true,” Caruana added.

“That is what this election on Saturday has become about: the choice between serious politics and amateurism,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party described Borg’s claim as “a blatant lie” that shows how he “doesn’t even understand statistics on national debt”.

Borg’s figures referred to non-consolidated debt, PL said. “He fails to realise that this is a non-consolidated measure. As Eurostat specifies, the debt measure must be consolidated”.

“Alex Borg either does not understand the very basics of public finances because he does not know the official definition of how debt is measured, or he is once again lying to deceive people,” the party said.

Unconsolidated debt refers to the sum total of debt accrued by the government, including debt that the government owes its own public entities and government bodies.

These monies that the government owes its own bodies are typically excluded when consolidated to present general government debt, namely the debt the government owes external entities.

EU's debt thresholds, as set out in the Maastricht criteria, also refer to consolidated, not unconsolidated, debt.