Country lost €200 million from power cuts, Nationalist Party says

Power cuts have cost the country around €200 million, the Nationalist Party has claimed.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, finance spokesperson Jerome Caruana Cilia said the figure was calculated together with economy spokesperson Ivan Bartolo and a team of experts.

The PN based its figures on the same calculation made by former finance minister Edward Scicluna back in 2009. He had said a blackout which lasts for a number of hours costs the country around €10 million.

Using the same workings, the PN said over the past 10 days, the country lost €200 million.

Speaking to the media, energy spokesperson Mark Anthony Sammut said that these blackouts could have been prevented.

He said that the “10 days of blackout is only the Prime Minister’s (Robert Abela) and Miriam Dalli’s (Energy minister) own record”, adding that other countries have also registered high temperatures but have not experienced the widespread cuts that Malta has gone through.

A direct contributor to these power cuts is the increase in population, Sammut said, adding that the price for such faults in the energy distribution system is being paid by “Enemalta workers and people having to throw away their food”.

Tourism spokesperson Mario de Marco said the power cuts also affected the tourism sector negatively

“Hotels are experiencing walkouts and cancellations,” de Marco said.

He said that the success of the tourism sector for the Islands is based on accessibility, the Maltese product and publicity. De Marco said that when tourists have a bad experience, they go on to write bad reviews which in turn, on average affects another possible future 12 customers.