Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1286726
5 NEWS 10.09.2020 NICOLE MEILAK MALTA'S finance minister has no plans to increase taxes to offset deficits the country will incur this year and the next as a result of COVID-19. Edward Scicluna said the government will take the necessary steps to continue mitigating the economic and social im- pact of the pandemic. e Finance Minister was speaking at the unveiling of the pre-budget docu- ment this morning. Budget 2021 is slated for October and is expected to be a continuation of the economic recovery plan announced at the start of summer. e pre-budget document comes with the tagline Towards a Sustainable Econ- omy. Scicluna said a deficit was unavoidable in battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Malta has for the past few years reg- istered budget surpluses without the need to raise taxes. "We know a deficit will occur again in 2021- the question is how big of a deficit we can afford. e more measures we implement, the more the deficit will in- crease and the more work we will have in the future to decrease it," Scicluna said. But Scicluna insisted that the govern- ment has no plans to increase taxes. However, his no-tax increase pledge was also conditional. He said that in the medium-to-long term, if the government is placed in a permanent deficit-risk position, a rise in tax rates may be on the table. e Finance Minister said that in spite of the crisis, Malta has been faring bet- ter than its European counterparts. Malta's unemployment rate has re- mained fairly steady, but the blow to the local tourism sector has had a signifi- cant impact on GDP. A number of priority areas feature in the pre-budget document, including economic growth in Gozo, environ- ment protection, rule-of-law measures and sustaining existing economic sec- tors and helping them to expand. Budget 2021: No plans to increase taxes, Finance Minister says GO Customer Care Now Reachable Via WhatsApp EVERY day, one billion peo- ple send five billion WhatsApp messages and over two bil- lion minutes of voice and vid- eo calls across the world who spend approximately 195 min- utes on WhatsApp each week. The platform was acquired by Facebook six years ago for $19 billion. The constant growth in popu- larity of WhatsApp has spurred GO to add WhatsApp to the list of multiple digital channels through which customers may engage to make their queries. GO handles more than sever- al thousands of client messages every week and across all its messaging platforms, mostly through its Facebook's Mes- senger and Live chat channels. Now, customers can start us- ing GO's WhatsApp channel by adding 79707970 to their contacts list to chat with a cus- tomer service representative through this convenient and accessible channel. Additionally, customers can also reach out to GO by click- ing on the 'message us on WhatsApp' link or scanning the QR code directly from the GO's 'Contact Us' page on its website – www.go.com.mt. "We are doing everything we can to facilitate communica- tion with our customers. We want to be where our custom- ers are, so if they need to reach out to us, for whatever reason, we want to make this as easy as possible, and what is an easier way than using the most pop- ular messaging app," said An- tonio Ivankovic, GO's Chief Commercial Officer. "As more and more custom- ers migrate towards digital channels, brands need to adopt the latest communication platforms to be able to react to their customers' queries as swiftly as possible. While the more trivial questions may be handled by our messenger bot, more complex queries are passed to our live agents. This is where our new WhatsApp channel, fully-integrated with GO's digital systems to allow agents to have a full history of a particular customer's in- teractions with the company, will come into action. This will allow for better follow up and more efficient communica- tions." "Launching our WhatsApp channel does not mean that those less tech savvy will be left behind in fact, customers can still contact GO via telephone at any time. It simply means that with more channels avail- able, we are serving our cus- tomers better, faster and more efficiently," concluded Antonio Ivankovic.