Yesterday, the Labour government issued a press release that announced no details at all about Malta’s current energy deals and situation other than praising the government’s policy that is keeping electricity and fuel prices lower than the European average thanks to subsidies. You can read the full press release here.
Statements by the Department of Information are supposed to provide actual information and data but instead have become pure exercises in propaganda, and their writing is indistinguishable from the Labour Party news propaganda outlet, ONE.
Today, we have sent some questions to the Minister for Energy Miriam Dalli along to the Finance Minister Clyde Caruana and Prime Minister Robert Abela.
It is the responsibility of the Energy Minister to respond to these questions, but we have copied the Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance because the Energy Minister has been consistently refusing to provide this information. Instead, she has focused on a very extensive public spending campaigns in the local Maltese “press” about her tree-planting campaign across Malta and Gozo.
The Minister for Finance is very much well aware that the lack of transparency in Malta’s national energy issues is unusual and highly irregular. The Prime Minister is responsible for allowing this information blackout and should be pressed to effect transparency on these very important and crucial matters.
The questions are being provided below.
Our first question is, against what are you hedging exactly?
What are these hedging agreements and what trades do they include?
Which is the derivatives desk that is selling you these hedges? This question is being made because the public deserves the right to know who the government and its public entities are dealing with.
At what price has Enemalta bought electricity from Electrogas in January, February and March of this year?
At what price has Enemalta purchased its gas and oil supplies in January, February and March?
About the last two questions, you have always maintained that this information is sensitive commercial information: it is not. The Maltese government is the exception in the EU as it refuses to publish these details while EU governments publish this data on a monthly and even weekly basis.
At what point will you become more transparent about Enemalta’s deals and the deals of its subsidiaries? Do you have a plan for transparency?
Do you have a plan to avoid having to fork out subsidies?
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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