The health authorities see no need to tighten COVID-19 restrictions or remove the few that are still in place, the Prime Minister told parliament on Monday.

Addressing the budget debate, Robert Abela said the economy was continuing to recover well from the impact of the pandemic.

But the recovery was dependant on everyone’s attitude and actions. Importantly, everyone needed to take the COVID-19 vaccination to avoid the return of restrictions being witnessed in other European countries, he said.

In Malta, the health authorities were seeing no need to tighten restrictions as the situation in hospital was under control. However, it was not the time yet to release the few restrictions that remained.

It was the situation in hospital which was the yardstick for the future, Abela said, while insisting once more that the few people who had not been vaccinated yet, and those were being invited for the booster jab, should do so immediately.

So far 76,000 booster doses had been administered, he said. 

“What we do today will determine the immediate and distant future,” Abela warned.

At the opening of his speech, the prime minister spoke on various government measures announced in the budget.

He said new generous incentives for people to buy electric cars, and an exemption from duty on property transfers to protect village cores, had already come into force.

As a result of the budget, there would also soon be a raise in pensions, stipends and the inwork benefit, as well as the number of free medicines. Tax refunds would be issued to 250,000 people.

Cheapest petrol, diesel

This government was also reducing tax on fuel to keep prices low at a time of recovery from the pandemic, in contrast to what used to happen under former PN governments, Abela said.

Malta now had the cheapest diesel among all EU member states and the cheapest petrol in the eurozone. Had Malta been under a PN government, with prices fluctuating according to market, motorists would have ended up spending €5 weekly more, he said.

Despite Opposition claims that the economy was failing, the prime minister said, international institutions were saying the opposite.

The latest among them was Scope Ratings, which had put Malta among the robust economies, with strong inward investment and moderate borrowing. The European Commission had also said the Maltese economy would next year show the strongest growth among all EU member states.

The prime minister said this was a budget focused on the future. But Malta needed to employ everybody’s talents to achieve the future it wanted for its children.

This was the budget with contained the strongest ever environmental and social measures, and measures that sustained the economy to create the best possible future for the people.   

The opposition was only interested in "negativity" in a failed attempt to undermine the creation of wealth.  The gaming sector was often mentioned, and yet this year the Gaming Authority had received more applications than 2020. There were more entrants than operators which had left Malta.

Turning to migration, the prime minister said migration remained a daily problem for Malta.

He said decisions taken in the past had enabled Malta to better handle this situation. But boats were continuing to leave Tunisia and Libya and a lot of work was being done to keep the number of arrivals low. 

Malta’s consistent message, also at the recent Paris conference on Libya, was to seek a holistic solution to the migration problem.  

Malta, he said, would protect those needing protection and relocate migrants where possible among other EU member states. This year, hundreds of migrants had been relocated. Furthermore, migrants not eligible for protection were being returned to their country of origin, something which was even more difficult than relocation. Still, he was satisfied that progress had been made.

The government was also increasing helping localities impacted by migration, and would continue to do so, the prime minister said.

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