Finance Minister Clyde Caruana on Wednesday defended social media posts sponsored by his ministry, saying they were not adverts and did not amount to self-promotion.

Replying to a parliamentary question by PN MP Karol Aquilina, Caruana said the posts were simply promoting his work as finance minister.

Aquilina asked Caruana whether he was aware that such adverts were in breach of guidelines issued by Standards Commissioner George Hyzler.

The guidelines, issued in June last year, state that adverts and promotional material produced by the government or public entities should not include partisan content. The guidelines also state that photographs of ministers, or even their names featuring in government adverts, will see them fall foul of the guidelines.

The standards commissioner had also said that government-sponsored publications should indicate that they are publicly funded, for the sake of transparency, and ministers should direct public funds to the media for advertising according to fair and objective criteria. 

The guidelines were drafted by the commissioner after he found that a €7,000 advertising campaign prominently featuring former minister Carmelo Abela did not contain any “information of value” to the public and was intended to boost the minister’s image.

But in reply to the question on Wednesday, Caruana defended this post and insisted that these were not self-promotion. “I have never done anything for self-promotion, and I will never do it,” he said.