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10 Business Today maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2014 Nationalist MP Tonio Fenech (pic- tured) has accused Finance Minister Edward Scicluna of "deceiving" the public with claims that the spike in public employment was related to the reclassification of workers. Addressing a pre-budget consultation meeting at the Excelsior, Scicluna yesterday said the sudden increase in people employed with the public sector resulted from changes to the classification of workers. By way of example, he said, those employed with the Public Works used to be classified under construction, while now they have been transferred under public administration. But according to Fenech, this was merely an excuse. "The statistics issued by the National Statistics Office are clear in that the increase of over 2,100 workers between March 2013 and April 2014 excludes the reclassification," he said. The PN noted that while an average of 1,500 civil service workers retire every year, the Labour government employed 3,600 persons. Following Scicluna's comments that the NSO were making "unclear" statements, Fenech and the PN expressed solidarity with NSO workers. According to Fenech, the workers were being subjected to "constant political pressure" when publishing statistics that were not to the government's liking. The PN urged the government to respect the autonomy of the NSO, whose responsibility is to present a clear economic picture of the country. "Instead of muzzling those who are doing their job, the government should be seeking solutions to the problems it is facing," Fenech said Hourly labour costs up by 3.8% in second quarter 2014 Matthew Vella Hourly labour costs rose by 1.2% in both the euro area (EA18) and the EU28 in the second quarter of 2014, compared with the same quarter of the previous year. Malta saw an increase of 3.8% in hourly labour costs for the whole economy. In the first quarter of 2014, hourly labour costs increased by 0.6% and 1.0% respectively. These figures were published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The two main components of labour costs are wages and salaries, and non-wage costs. In the euro area, wages and salaries per hour worked grew by 1.2% and the non-wage component by 1.0%, in the second quarter of 2014 compared with the same quarter of the previous year. In the first quarter of 2014 the annual changes were +1.0% and -0.6% respectively. In the EU28, hourly wages and salaries rose by 1.2% and the non-wage component by 1.1% for the second quarter of 2014, compared with +1.4% and -0.2% respectively for the first quarter of 2014. In the second quarter of 2014 compared with the same quarter of the previous year, hourly labour costs in the euro area rose by 2.5% in industry, by 0.7% in construction, by 0.9% in services and by 0.6% in the (mainly) non-business economy. In the EU28, labour costs per hour grew by 2.8% in industry, by 0.4% in construction, by 0.9% in services and by 0.7% in the (mainly) non- business economy. The Labour Cost Index is a short-term indicator showing the development of hourly labour costs incurred by employers. It is calculated dividing the labour cost in national currency by the number of hours worked. Therefore, the development of both variables, labour costs and hours worked, affects the evolution of the index. The highest annual increases in hourly labour costs for the whole economy were registered in Estonia (+7.3%), Slovakia (+6.0%), Latvia (+5.9%), Lithuania (+5.1%) and Romania (+5.0%). Decreases were recorded in Cyprus (-3.9%) and Ireland (-0.4%). Matthew Vella The former director-general of the Mal- ta Financial Services Authority, André Camilleri, will serve as one of five panel members dealing with eurozone banks' complaints about the European Central Bank's new watchdog. Camilleri will join names such as the former Bundesbank board Edgar Meister, who was on Germany's central bank board up until 2007 and led the EU's Banking Supervision Committee from 1998 to 2007, as part of the Single Supervisory Mechanism's (SSM) administrative board of review. The ECB takes over from national watchdogs as the eurozone's single banking supervisor on 4 November, as part of a push for closer European financial integration to try to avert any future financial crisis, and is reviewing the bloc's 120 largest banks. Banks can challenge the watchdog's decisions – the SSM – through the new board as an alternative to using the European Court of Justice. The board's opinions will be reviewed by the ECB watchdog's top board and are non-binding. Nor can it suspend ECB decisions. None of the five panel members can be part of any European institution, national supervisor or the ECB. They are: Javier Arístegui Yáñez, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Spain; Concetta Brescia Morra, law professor; André Camilleri, former Director General of the Malta Financial Services Authority; Edgar Meister, former Member of the Executive Board of Germany's Bundesbank, Attorney at Law; Jean-Paul Redouin, former First Deputy Governor of the Banque de France and Chair of the Commission Bancaire. Finance Minister's 'deceitful attempts' to hide increase in public workforce Shadow finance minister Tonio Fenech says reclassification of public workers does not justify spike in number of workers employed with the government

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