The Times: double exposure for Labour's 'ordinary families' spiel
The Times published this story last Friday. I referred to it in my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday yesterday.
timesofmalta.com – Friday, 10th September 2010 – 11:12CET
Families not feeling economic growth – PL
The Labour Party said today that ordinary families were not feeling the economic growth which the government was boasting about.
Party economic affairs spokesman Gavin Gulia noted that the GDP growth registered so far this year stemmed mostly from increased profits in the financial services sector. The banking sector, he said, had seen profits rise five times over those made between 2005-2007 – before the financial crisis.
In contrast, wages and salaries in the first half of 2010 grew by only 0.1% in nominal terms, which in real terms when considering inflation, actually meant a contraction.
It was therefore no wonder, Dr Gulia said, that the Eurostat consumer confidence survey showed that confidence levels in Malta remained at a record low.
And lo and behold, there it is in the newspaper again this morning.
The Times, Monday, 13th September 2010
‘Families not feeling economic growth’
Families were not feeling the effects of increased economic growth in spite of the government’s “euphoria” on the issue, according to the Labour Party.
In the first half of this year, salaries rose by just 0.1 per cent in nominal terms, which, when taking inflation into account, means salaries actually dropped by 1.1 per cent, PL economy spokesman Gavin Gulia said.
He added that, although the latest figures released by the National Statistics Office indicated salaries went up in the second quarter of this year when compared to the first, they had actually decreased in both quarters in comparison to the same periods last year.
Dr Gulia also noted that the NSO figures showed the banking sector registered profits five times higher than in the 2005-2007 pre-recession period. Another anomaly was the fact that it was now being reported that pay rises and profits in the construction sector were up by 7.8 and 14 per cent respectively in spite of an announcement made barely two weeks ago that such salaries dropped by five per cent, employment was down by 10 per cent and hours worked dropped by 12 per cent.
According to provisional estimates published by the NSO last Wednesday, GDP in real terms rose by 3.9 per cent in the second quarter of this year when compared to the corresponding period in 2009.
The NSO said GDP from the expenditure approach indicated that GDP at constant prices increased by 3.9 per cent.
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Daphne
Just read MaltaStar’s Leader for today…. Joseph Leader of the World…JAQQ JAQQ JAQQ!
I find it so utterly incomprehensible that The Times should give so much exposure to these pointless statements by the Labour Party. They are not worthy of the paper they are written on and, if anything, they prove exactly the opposite – that tiny Malta with hardly any natural resources to speak of is holding its own within the EU and the rest of the world.
Huge financial institutions with massive assets that could have bought these islands lock, stock and barrel twenty times over have gone bust and many others survived by the skin of their teeth and a dose of quantitative easing. And yet our banking sector has no shortage of reserves and “registered profits five times higher than the 2005-7 period”.
So according to the Labour Party, families in Malta are feeling poor, the streets are deserted and nobody took any holidays this summer. Apart from the Muscats, of course.
I don’t see Maltese families doing cartwheels and living it up, that’s true, but compared with the growing unemployment in the rest of Europe it looks as though we have not done badly at all.
Muscat has upgraded. He is now into buffet, not burgers anymore.