Momentum will push for a tax on vacant properties, an increase to the minimum wage, and a cap on the number of unskilled foreign workers if the party is elected to parliament next election.
The party, founded on the back of Arnold Cassola’s strong performance at last year’s MEP elections, has launched its economic policy promising to introduce measures it says will tackle problems caused by unaffordable housing and harness Malta’s entrepreneurial spirit.
These policies emerge from a series of gatherings held with members of the public, dubbed ‘vision circles’.
“We had almost 100 people attend our vision circle on the economy,” party secretary Mark Camilleri Gambin told Times of Malta.
“We then took the ideas that were proposed and discussed them with several experts to transform them into fully-fledged implementable proposals.”
Among the party’s 17-point plan is a pledge to tax vacant residential properties to discourage the hoarding of empty houses and free up more properties on the market.
This tax will exclude the first vacant property, meaning that a household won’t have to pay tax on its summer residence, nor will it have to pay additional tax on properties that are being rented out.
While the exact rate of tax remains unclear, Momentum says it plans to implement this by upping fees for electricity and water meters on these vacant properties.
And, to help push this forward, the party says it plans to expedite an existing 10-year plan to create a property register, slashing the time frame by half.
Tax would exclude first vacant property, meaning a household won’t have to pay tax on its summer residence
Cap unskilled foreign workers
The party also says it will raise Malta’s minimum wage from the current €221.78 per week to €360 weekly, bringing it in line with the recommendations made by a recent Caritas report that called for a “decent living wage” of €368 per week.
The party says it plans to address concerns over the number of foreign workers in the country by introducing a cap on “unskilled third-country workers”. This will result in higher wages across Malta’s workforce, the party argues.
What the cap would be remains unclear, but the party says it will establish different caps for each employment sector, based on their current employment levels and the projections for the future.
Momentum says that if more than 30% of a company’s employees are foreign nationals, they should be made to pay a tiered “infrastructure fee” to make up for the strain caused on the local infrastructure. This fee would go to the town’s local council, to be spent on improving the locality’s infrastructure and services.
And localities experiencing large-scale construction projects should also be compensated, Momentum says, pledging to force contractors to allocate 2% of the project’s value to fund public art installations or performances in the area.
Stop brain drain, boost investment in innovation
Meanwhile, the party says it will try to reverse a brain drain by offering highly-skilled Maltese who have been abroad for more than five years a flat tax rate of 15% for a decade if they choose to return to Malta.
This effectively reverses an existing scheme in which locals who have been abroad for a decade enjoy a reduced tax rate for five years.
Companies who file their taxes on time will also benefit from a reduced tax rate of 25%, as well as being awarded additional points when applying for government tenders.
Momentum also says it wants to tackle poor governance within the public sector by obliging all government departments and entities to submit all their transactions – including awarded contracts and payroll details – to the auditor general, who would publish them for public scrutiny.