Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1529157
7 BUDGET2025 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 NOVEMBER 2024 Going full throttle Quality is not something you can seek before you have built a solid basis on which to launch even more new projects and ideas of quality. Yesterday's achievements are tomorrow's bigger targets, enriching the process and stimulating even more positivity. IF there is one thing that absolutely char- acterises the Budget for 2025, it is the Government's commitment to go full throttle in its unstinting efforts to contin- ue steering the economy towards a Mal- tese society that rightly demands better quality in all sectors of life. Having laid the groundwork and, since the change of government in 2013, successfully faced the challenges from decades of neglect and utter lethargy, it is now time for refining, restrengthen- ing, and uplifting the process through a wholesome package of positive meas- ures. The leap forward achieved since 2022, especially, has given the nation the respite it so urgently needed, rank- ing it among the very top echelons within the European Union. But it does not stop there. While this Budget is yet another jewel in a string of positive, no-tax budgets, there will still be new challenges. Rather than ex- pecting it to serve merely as some sort of fortification against future events, Budget 2025 offers both short-term and long-term solutions and peace of mind. You cannot go full throttle unless you have a tankful of fuel. The state of the economy and the prodigious inter- national and European ratings it has drawn, serve as an extra fillip to achiev- ing what, just a few years back, would have certainly been deemed impossible. Quality is not something you can seek before you have built a solid basis on which to launch even more new pro- jects and ideas of quality. Yesterday's achievements are tomorrow's bigger targets, enriching the process and stim- ulating even more positivity. The Disabilities sector is again a sig- nificant beneficiary of the Budget for next year, with measures that consoli- date the work and harmony achieved in recent years. Persons with disabili- ties and their families and carers need all the support that the State can give them, and as a government we certain- ly have not been found wanting when it came to offering financial and emotion- al respite and enhancing support. The Welfare State is there to right- ly identify the sectors in society that merit this support, as we see with the proposed measure of an additional sum to compensate for the loss of disability assistance when persons with disabili- ties retire but not having paid enough national insurance contributions. This means that disabled pensioners will see an increase in their pension to reflect the discontinued assistance, ensuring that the pension reaches at least the national minimum wage, and which in- crease will not be less than 10% of the assistance they were entitled to before retiring. In this way, the State will now be assisting more than 300 persons with disabilities. Another hefty increase, from €500 to €750, is in the tax credit granted to par- ents of children with disabilities to help them with expenses incurred for spe- cialised therapies. Also from 2025, the Carers Grant will be paid to parents who have children with severe disabilities under the age of 16. The scheme is thus being extend- ed to reach a wider band of carers who are either unemployed or did not work enough hours to be able to take care of their children. Mention needs to be made to an in- crease in assistance for persons with disabilities and for carers that reflects the increase in the minimum wage, with a person caring for two family mem- bers with high or medium dependency receiving a payment of one and a half times the standard rate. Other measures and initiatives an- nounced in the Budget highlight the Disabilities sector, among them the launching of a pilot project to provide evening services for persons with severe disabilities and who currently lack such support, and the opening of an Active Ageing Centre in Senglea to comple- ment various other centres to expand the assistance scheme for elderly indi- viduals in need of renting motorized beds. 2025 will mark the start of a new era during which the issue of quality will be foremost in our minds as we continue to seek solutions for the benefit of the whole of Malta's evolving and equal society. By JULIA FARRUGIA, Minister for Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector