Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is receiving a €7,000 car allowance each year to keep using his personal car for official purposes instead of availing himself of the official car which was used by his predecessor.

According to information given in response to a parliamentary question, it was revealed that after becoming Prime Minister, Dr Muscat opted to keep his own car, a black Alfa 159, instead of using Dr Gonzi’s former official car, a BMW seven series.

As compensation, Dr Muscat will be receiving an annual allowance of €7,000 per year.

Dr Muscat told Parliament that he will be availing himself of this allowance “according to a system introduced by the previous administration”.

This is the first time that the Prime Minister has chosen to keep his own private car for official duties and take an allowance instead.

During the previous PN administrations, both former prime ministers Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi were not paid any car allowance as they used the official car provided by the Office of the Prime Minister.

On the other hand, former Prime Minister Alfred Sant used to drive himself around in an official car provided by the Government.

In the same reply, Dr Muscat said that all the other official ministerial cars used by the previous administration were assigned to the new members of Cabinet.

However, since there weren’t enough cars to go round all the Cabinet members, the OPM leased a number for a short period for use by ministers and parliamentary secretaries.

Every ministry has been given the green light to make the necessary arrangements to buy or lease these cars.