MLP tax holiday proposal meant to stimulate the economy - Sant

The Labour Party's two-month tax holiday proposal was a once-only measure intended to stimulate the economy, Alfred Sant said yesterday.

The need for such a measure, which he has costed at Lm25 million, had become urgent, the Labour leader said when addressing a news conference on the theme The Country's Direction.

He said a new Labour government would be passing on to the people savings the government would make by such means as reducing government expenditure.

This included between Lm20 million to Lm25 million a year related to EU membership, he said.

Those who were deriding the measures announced by the Labour Party as gimmicks did not understand how to create a programme aimed at stimulating the economy, he scoffed.

The economy was stagnant and immediate, medium and long term measures were required to give it a new lease of life, as those being proposed by Labour aimed to do.

The Nationalist government, Dr Sant said, had created an inferiority complex among the Maltese and Gozitans.

In the past four years, there were many examples of entities which used to be managed by the Maltese but which now had been taken over to be managed by foreigners.

Such was Mid Med Bank, which was sold cheaply and was now being managed by foreign managers in the interests of an enormous foreign corporation.

Air Malta had also lost its Maltese managing director, as did the airport and Maltapost.

A new Labour government would be prudent, and would curb public expenditure and insist on value for money.

Another commitment would be towards curbing the tax burden. The medium term objective would be for tax growth to be lower than the growth of the economy, which would grow at a job creating rate. In the second stage, a big effort would be made towards reducing the tax burden.

He described as "madness" the Nationalist government's plans to open the outpatients department at the Mater Dei hospital next week, saying that from a professional point of view this service would be cut off from the rest of the hospital.

Dr Sant was asked what sense it made for the Labour Party to propose a referendum to choose between partnership and membership - once partnership was negotiated - as the membership option would by then have been lost.

Dr Sant replied that people would be asked to choose between partnership as negotiated by Labour and the membership option as negotiated by Dr Fenech Adami, which, after all, was only about the way EU rules were applied, he claimed.

Dr Sant later visited the Amitex Fair at the Trade Fair Grounds in Naxxar, accompanied by the party's spokesman for tourism, Karmenu Vella. Mr Vella said that spending by Maltese overseas had gone down by 12.5 per cent, reflecting the state of the economy.

In a message for Freedom Day, Labour Party leader Alfred Sant said yesterday that neutrality and freedom opened new routes and provided the country with new opportunities.

Dr Sant said that Malta was European and did not need to join the European Union. It needed to move closer to the EU while remaining independent, adapting relations to its own circumstances.

As an EU member, he warned, Malta would end up a province in a continent from where it would not be able to control its own destiny.