Opposition leader Alex Borg accused the government of panicking over foreign workers and letting productivity fall “below zero” as he replied to last Monday’s budget speech, saying Budget 2027 hands out cash but builds little for the future and leaves families to pay for the state’s mistakes. The economy was growing, he said, but people’s lives were not improving at the same pace and the budget would be judged on what people keep in their pockets, how much free time families have and whether they can afford a home.
“Wherever the government does well, we will recognise it without hesitation,” he said. “Where it falls short, we have a duty to say so.”
Borg welcomed the decision to keep social measures, continue income tax cuts for parents and pay a €1,000 super bonus to workers, all of which he said a PN government would keep. But he said pensioners had been promised a €50 weekly rise before the election five months ago, only to be told by the prime minister it would be €10. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana announced last week that the €10 increase would include the mandatory cost-of-living adjustment. “You promised €50 a week,” said Borg. “Five months later, you come here with €3.59.” He put the number at risk of poverty at 95,000, with 24,000 full-time workers still needing state benefits to get by.
On growth, Borg said the government’s own pre-budget document showed productivity growth falling year on year and dropping in 2025. He cited a Malta Chamber of Commerce study finding that 69% of economic growth between 2015 and 2025 came from extra labour, with just 3% from productivity gains. The population reached almost 590,000 at the end of 2025, with net migration of nearly 14,000 in a single year. In the second quarter of 2026, he said, government spending rose 14.7%, financed by an extra €1 billion in debt.
His sharpest attack focused on the measures targeting third-country workers without long-term residency. He reminded MPs that Caruana had once said Malta needed 30,000 foreign workers, a figure that became 50,000, then 100,000, with talk in June of a population near 800,000. The measures were announced without consultation, Borg said and the Chamber of SMEs, the MHRA, the nurses’ union and the doctors’ association were all concerned, while the General Workers Union called the plan populist. A PN government would instead set up an authority to match recruitment to skills, fund training and offer grants for automation, digitalisation and AI, regulate recruitment agents and encourage Maltese professionals abroad to return home. Higher work permit fees, he said, should apply only to new applications or a change of employer, not to renewals with an employer who had already trained the worker.
Borg said government documents showed traffic cost Malta €770 million in 2025, or 3.1% of GDP, rising to €900 million a year by 2030 and that the Malta in Motion mass transport promise went unmentioned in the speech. He called for an independent, published review of this summer’s power cuts and a clear plan before next summer, saying families “should not be left to find solutions on their own in the dark.” Project Green’s allocation would fall from €30 million to €20 million, a 33% cut, and of the €700 million promised over seven years for urban greening, less than €150 million was spent in five years.
He criticised the new tourist eco tax of €8 a night in hotels and €10 in short lets, proposing it apply only in peak summer months. “In the low season, when the tourism sector is already suffering from low business, the last thing it needs is a tax on top that drives people away,” he said. Gozo was mentioned only three times in the speech, he said, all negatively, noting that 67% of the island’s 2025 tourists were domestic and a Chamber document showing spending per tourist had fallen from €919 in 2015 to €771 in 2025. Government debt reached €12 billion in August and would hit €13 billion by the end of next year, with people paying around €1 million in interest every day. He demanded that the prime minister and ministers publish asset declarations and that Labour publish its accounts.
