After seven years as finance minister, Edward Scicluna will be proposed for new Central Bank governor following Mario Vella’s appointment as Special Commissioner for Economic, Financial and Trade Relations with the UK
Finance Minister Edward Scicluna will be resigning from his post in the coming days, the government has announced.
The resignation comes in light of current Malta Central Bank governor Dr. Mario Vella appointment as Special Commissioner for Economic, Financial and Trade Relations with the United Kingdom, when the transitional period of Brexit will come to an end in 2021.
“New regulations will come into force in different sectors which will have a significant impact on our country,” the government said.
But Scicluna’s resignation comes ahead of a Cabinet reshuffle in which the finance ministry has been earmarked for the Prime Minister’s head of secretariat, and recently co-opted MP, Clyde Caruana. Vella will be resigning from his post at the Central Bank on 31 December.
The government thanked Scicluna for his work as finance minister over the past seven years. “His leadership of the country’s finances was instrumental to the presentation of successful budgets which created and distributed wealth and changed for the better the lives of thousands of Maltese and Gozitan families,” it said.
Scicluna is expected to resign from minister in the coming days, and as an MP by the end of the year, opening up yet another casual election for the Labour government to renew its backbench.
In 2009, Scicluna was elected as Labour MEP after joining the PL to stand for the European elections. In 2013, he resigned his post to become finance minister.
He served as Chairman of the Malta Council of Economic and Social Development (MCESD) (1999–2003) and of the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) (1997–99), an Electoral Commissioner (1987–93), a director of the Central Bank of Malta (1996–2003) and a member of Malta’s National Euro Change-over Committee (NECC) (2005–2008). In the private sector he was chairman of the HSBC Malta Bond Fund (since 2002) and of CWG plc and director of MIB Ltd.
Scicluna is a graduate of the universities of Malta, Toronto, Plater College, University of Oxford, and was professor and head of the Department of Economics at the University of Malta.
19th November 2020