Robert Abela started the new year exactly as he ended the previous one: borrowing more than ever before, the Nationalist Party said Friday.
Figures published today by the National Statistics Office on government finances show that, just as in the previous year, the country’s debt has continued to rise.
According to NSO statistics, Malta began 2026 with government debt reaching €11,374 million. This €11.4 billion debt is equivalent to nearly €28,000 in debt for every Maltese and Gozitan citizen.
The sharp level of debt that Robert Abela continues to burden the population with means that, in just one year, Abela has managed to generate €812 million in new debt. In fact, debt at the end of last January increased by 8% compared to January 2025. This further confirms that since becoming Prime Minister, Robert Abela has borrowed more than all previous Prime Ministers, Labour and Nationalist combined.
Under the Labour Government’s policies, debt will continue to spiral in the coming years and is projected to reach a new record of over €14 billion by 2028. This would mean that while Robert Abela has already doubled the debt accumulated by his predecessors, within three years he will have tripled it.
Alongside record debt levels, another record is also rising – the interest we are paying from our taxes on government debt. This has now reached €23 million.
As for the government’s financial deficit, at the start of this year this stood at €151 million the PN said.
Malta is currently under an Excessive Deficit Procedure, into which the Labour Government placed the country in July 2024. This is despite the fact that last April the Minister for Finance had boasted that Malta would exit this procedure early.
The Government’s Fiscal Advisory Council, a group of experts appointed by the Minister for Finance to assess his financial and economic policies, recently warned that government spending would place the country in a vulnerable position and urged the Government to strengthen Malta’s public finances.
The Government continues to increase debt even though it is now widely recognised that nothing is being done to address the country’s most pressing problems. In recent weeks, a detailed report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) highlighted how Malta is plagued by infrastructure problems resulting from a flawed economic model, including traffic congestion, unplanned population growth, and other issues. This is in addition to problems in school infrastructure, hospital waiting lists, and marine pollution – all of which remain unresolved, the PN said.
While the Government has failed to find funds to tackle these challenges that are weakening the quality of life of Maltese and Gozitan families, we continue to hear daily stories of reckless spending on consultancy contracts for insiders, advertising and propaganda, and phantom jobs – including €50 million that was somehow spent by Air Malta, which has now been closed for almost two years.
While Robert Abela appears to think carefully about how to leave more money in his own pocket – to the extent that in recent days we even witnessed a judge express astonishment at his greed – the same cannot be said for the way he has managed the country’s finances: a record level of debt that entire generations will be forced to repay, the PN said.
The statement was signed by Adrian Delia, Shadow Minister for Finance, and Jerome Caruana Cilia, Shadow Minister for the Economy and Enterprise.