It depends what you are hearing about the economy. On one end I hear people say that it is going far too well compared with the previous government. On the other hand, these are people who have no clue of what an economy is and how it works (apologies for generalizing there).
The truth is that a strong economy is not built overnight. It takes long to forge and is not an easy achievement, considering Malta produces practically nothing and consumes a lot.
Therefore, it is quite obvious that investments have to substantially come from outside and that the only thing we can properly sell to these outsiders are Services.
Services require no prime materials but need a good, solid educated workforce.
Tourism BAM! I-Gaming, BAM! Financial Sector, BAM!, IT, BAM! And so on and so forth insomma.

In the past few years we have seen businesses grow and purchase assets, which indicates that an influx of money has hit the country (flus fl’idejn)

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a52f83db1ef54824f709ca768baea0122323bf018a784870e7892a5505eebef9.png

Good, one would say. God knows how much stuff we sold to other other countries then.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d24dd0e4f28f8cf69ddb326b6067fe2bf9ce07bd5db4f69ee97e4ec127d49871.png

Ermm, No.
Ok then, but there must have been some increase in foreign direct investment right?

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/322ac4fa1b76c3d5f9f5577e84e227dd364f30abc32a5a02a29ca50860bc68bf.png

Nein.
Some of the reasons for this inflated economy are pretty obvious now. Lower electricity bills, lower unemployment by increasing the public sector payrolls, sale of passports (yes those are taken into account when building similar graphs to these), building permits galore and various other little sneaky maneuvers. When you look at the actual GDP Growth Rate, which does not show the actual GDP but only it’s annual growth, one can see that Malta recovered quite well from the 2008 recession. Seems like we were growing our wealth slowly, with a clear upward trend, when most other countries couldn’t make ends meet.
Then suddenly, when everything was going ok, Cowsef comes to rescue (mind you he’s a proper economist and knows what he’s doing) and you can see marked in red the “bump” he gave to the GDP growth. Being it a fabricated injection of wealth, the graph is already showing that the GROWTH is slowing down. Although that might not mean a lot to most people, it practically means that we were trying to accelerate more than we could handle and sooner or later “il-lira fil-but” will go back to where it belongs. Cioe in some Panama account.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/685d817295cb8f592eb22611b48a84e6982b6650cc33da9394886e5d8fe97df9.png

Hope that this superficial explanation sheds at least a little bit of light on where things really stand. This is in fact why I think, stated already in some post last year, that the Muscat government didn’t even plan to win a second mandate. It looks like they were only interested in pillaging the country and then disappear to some forgotten Island in the Caribbean.

The Nationalist Party have on a number of occasions now promised to completely change how the country is run and how the institutions function. Once they see exactly what it is that the PN are proposing, they would have no real argument. Maybe the PN isn’t perfect- no party is anyway so I never truly understand this dream some people live in where the politicians are perfect. But with proper mechanisms in place, they will be voting for a proper functioning country which I am sure they would much prefer.

After the speech, he hugged her.

Speaking of Bank of Valletta and Electrogas, what about that massive loan guarantee?

What’s the status of the proposed security of supply agreement with regard to possible European Commission veto?

My thoughts too. Could it be that there was sufficient discontent amongst his ranks that he couldn’t risk a vote of no confidence?

Joseph Muscat always tries to undermine the country’s institutions. That has always been his tactic and unfortunately there are many people who admire him for it.