In a statement in response to the first five proposals of the Labour Party manifesto, the Nationalist Party said that contrary to what the Prime Minister said the sums allocated for each of these measures do not add together to €1390 million.

When asked by Net TV, Prime Minister Abela explained that:

The green lungs proposal would cost €700 million over seven years and therefore €500 million over 5 years.

The tax income reduction proposal is an injection of €323 million in people’s disposable income.

The reduction in the corporate tax rate will mean an additional support to firms of €100 million.

The proposals to help pensioners are a boost of €410 million.

The first-time buyers scheme will have an allocation of €57 million.

Anyone with a calculator can verify that:

500+323+100+410+57 adds up to 1390.

500 + 323 + 100 + 410 + 57 = 1390

Somehow the Nationalist Party’s calculator gave them a higher result.

This is not the first time that the Nationalist Party has been caught making basic mathematical mistakes. In fact, in the 2017 campaign then-Leader Simon Busuttil had said that he would increase the minimum pension by €22 per week, which means an increase of €1,144 a year. According to him this measure would have cost €8.5 million. At that time, it was pointed out that there were 18,000 pensioners on that benefit. And when you multiply 18,000 by 1,144, the result is not €8.5 million but €20.6 million.

Five years have passed, and yet the Nationalist Party has remained unable to pass a basic math test. This suggests that Bernard Grech’s consultants are the same ones used by Simon Busuttil.

Not only did they fail in basic math, but when they were in Government, Malta was put under the excessive deficit procedure for three times by the European Commission. This is a negative record that no other EU country has ever achieved, not even Greece.