Prime Minister Robert Abela wants to have all the facts on the controversial hospital deal before deciding on any course of action.
Addressing Labour Party supporters in Qormi on Sunday, Dr Abela said one of his first moves on taking up office last month was to set up a committee made up of members of the civil service from the Finance and Health ministries to give him “a full stocktake” of the deal to privatise three state-owned hospitals.
On Saturday Opposition leader Adrian Delia demanded answers from the government as the Nationalist Party published an evaluation report about hospital privatisation deal “kept hidden from the public.”
Dr Delia said that the three public hospitals had been taken away from the Maltese and given to a company with no healthcare experience.
The evaluation report, published by the PN shows that one of the people on the three-man panel tasked with assessing the privatisation deal was a representative of Nexia BT, the accounting firm which opened secret offshore companies for Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri.
The evaluation committee heaped praise on the bid submitted by Vitals Global Healthcare to take over St Luke's, Gozo and Karin Grech hospitals and recommended that they be named the preferred bidder.
Vitals was set up by an investment group with no experience in the healthcare sector. The company won the deal to take over the three hospitals in 2016 and sold it on two years later.
On Sunday, Dr Abela told the party faithful that good governance meant looking into things properly before taking the necessary decisions. “We do not shy away from decisions,” he said.
Dr Abela also said he had also reached out to Dr Delia to consult with him on the contentious passports-for-cash scheme.
The Opposition leader however, had declined his invitation saying the Individual Investor Programme should be scrapped.
“There are exponents even within the PN who are even telling me that getting rid of this programme is not in the best interest of country. So my response to Dr Delia is we will not be stopping the programme,” he said, adding that if possible the programme will be improved.
Will work with those who have Malta's best interests at heart
Earlier, he told the crowd that the message he wanted to send out to the world was that Malta is a disciplined but fair country.
Dr Abela said he had recently travelled to Brussels where he met with Nationalist MEPs and was disappointed by their negativity.
“I am ready to confront criticism. But I want to work with people who have the best interests of the country at heart,” he said.
In contrast, Dr Abela said he had also met with European Parliament president David Sassoli who he said had told him that he had taken note of the reforms carried out in the opening days of his leadership.
Dr Abela told those gathered that the fall-out from Brexit, the EU’s environmental targets, and the need for solidarity on the migration question had been high on his priority list during his first official trip to the European capital.