'NSO data confirms government borrowed €500m before election': PN

National data published on Wednesday confirms that the government borrowed half a billion euros in the month before calling an election, the Nationalist party said. 

Last week, before the electorate headed to the polls, PN leader Alex Borg said the government had borrowed €1 billion in April and that figures published by the European Central Bank showed that Malta's public debt had continued to rise.

The party then accused 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”.

But Finance Minister Clyde Caruana had said Borg's claims showed his “financial illiteracy” and “amateurism”.

National Statistics Office data published on Wednesday show that the government slashed its deficit to €65.5 million by the end of April compared to €261.4 million in the previous year.

However, government debt rose by €1,139 million to €11,974.2 million and debt servicing costs totalled €105 million. 

The PN said in a statement that the figures show the government borrowed no less than €558 million in April.

"The same figures, which should have been published on Friday, confirm what the PN revealed before the election about the exorbitant public debt incurred by Labour in the final month before the election."

The PN notes that NSO statistics for the period between January and April show that, over the course of one year, the government increased the country’s debt by more than one billion euro (€1.139 billion, or 10.5%), with national debt now standing at almost €12 billion (€11,974 million). 

"Half of this one billion euro in debt over one year was incurred in April, meaning in the final month before the election alone.

"This completely crushes the argument Clyde Caruana tried to make before the election, when he claimed it was not true that our country borrows one billion euros a year. In fact, the figures published by the NSO today prove him wrong, because the government borrowed even more than that."

Government debt figures confirm not only the incompetence but also the deceit of Abela and Caruana, who not only interfered in the work of the NSO to hide this information but also tried to cast doubt on the arguments made by the PN, arguments which have today been confirmed as correct by the information released by the same NSO, the PN said. 

"The statistics published today confirm that, when it comes to debt, in five years Abela has managed to borrow more than all the debt accumulated by all of our country’s leaders combined over the previous 55 years," the party added.

PN welcomes news that Malta is set to exit EU excessive deficit procedures 

The PN also reacted to news that the European Commission has moved to drop excessive deficit procedures against Malta, with the country having reduced its deficit levels in recent years.

Welcoming the development, it said this is a procedure which, as happened in the case of the FATF greylisting, dragged Malta into it under Abela’s Labour government because the country was not in line with the agreed fiscal targets. 

"In March 2025, Caruana boasted that the country’s finances were doing so well that Malta would exit this Procedure early. 

"Yet we had to wait until today for what he told us back then to become reality."