Updated | Muscat pledges to publish power station contract ‘soon’ after end of year promise falls short

Joseph Muscat's pledge to publish public contracts

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has pledged to publish the contract with Electrogas for the construction of a LNG power station “as soon as possible” after his earlier target to publish all major government contracts by the end of 2016 fell through.

“As promised, the government published all major contracts except for the energy contract which is under the strict scrutiny of the EU Commission and is certainly not being hidden by the government,” a spokesperson for Muscat told MaltaToday. “The commitment to publish the contract remains.”

Addressing a no-confidence parliamentary motion against his government in April in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, Muscat admitted that his government needed to up its game on issues related to good governance.

“By the end of the year, we will publish the remaining contracts that we have signed in the main sectors to prove that we don’t fear transparency,” he said.

The Prime Minister repeated his promise shortly after, during a Labour mass meeting to mark Worker’s Day.

Since then, the government published its contracts with Vitals Global Healthcare on the privatisation of the St Luke’s, Gozo and Karin Grech hospitals, but with several pages blacked out.

Yet main contracts and deals signed by the Labour administration remain unpublished. These include its contracts with Electrogas on the construction and operation of the LNG power station in Delimara, including a €360 million bank guarantee granted to the consortium, its heads of agreement with Sadeen for the private ‘American University of Malta’, its deal with Azerbajani state-owned company Socar for the provision of gas, and a joint deal between Enemalta and Shanghai Electric to construct a wind farm in Montenegro.

However, in a right of reply to the story published by MaltaToday, Muscat said the government has so far published all major contracts except for the energy ones.

He noted that the government contract to transfer land at Zonqor and Cospicua to Sadeen for its university project has been published in its totality.

Joseph Muscat promised to publish all major contracts by end of 2016. He didn't. Another broken promise. https://t.co/nf0Oh5SUfr

— Mario de Marco (@TeamMDM) January 2, 2017

“The publication of the contract was accompanied by an open-ended debate which lasted for hours in Parliament about each and every detail of the contract, which is the only legally-binding document between the government and Sadeen,” he said. “This is not to mention the independent rigorous process that the American University of Malta underwent through the National Commission for Further and Higher Education which granted the university license.”

He also noted that the public transport contract with Autobuses de Leon was published in full, and that the Individual Investor Programme contract with Henley and Partners was published [with blacked-out clauses], green-lighted by the European Commission and debated at the Public Accounts Committee.

The government has also requested the Auditor General to review its contract with Vitals Global Healthcare for the privatisation of the three hospitals, and has accepted to have it debated in a full plenary session.

“All these show the government's willingness to publish relevant major contracts and remain open to scrutiny through all institutions,” he said. “What a stark difference from what happened under Nationalist administrations.”

‘Another broken promise’ – Marlene Farrugia, Mario de Marco 

Partit Demokratiku leader and independent MP Marlene Farrugia lambasted the news as “another broken promise” by the Prime Minister.

In a Facebook post, she questioned the viability of Labour’s landmark LNG power station project itself – arguing that it would have made more sense for the government to go for a gas pipeline connecting Malta and Italy or for offshore renewable energy. 

In a tweet, PN deputy leader Mario de Marco also lambasted this as "another broken promise".