Domestic demand to drive growth in 2023 – CBM / Malta News Briefing – Friday 17 February 2023

Updated 1600

Malta ‘can keep going’ if one energy source fails, says Dalli: The government can keep the lights on should the offshore tanker supplying the Electrogas power station need to be disconnected in a prolonged storm, energy minister Miriam Dalli has assured the country. Malta’s total energy demand hovers between 400 and 550 megawatts at any point in time but the country can supply 700, Dalli said on Thursday.

HSBC doubles minimum home loan down payment, increases interest rate: HSBC Malta has increased its interest rate for home loans and doubled its minimum down payment requirement for first-time buyers. The bank now requires first-time buyers to stump up 20 per cent of the property value upfront when applying for a loan. Previously, it accepted minimum down payments of 10 per cent. First-time buyers are now being charged an annual percentage change rate of 3.1 per cent over the term of their loan, versus the 2.7 per cent the bank previously charged.

Malta resident population at 519,000, of which one in five is foreign: Malta’s final resident population stands at 519,562, having more than doubled over a century, growing by more than 100,000 over the past 10 years. The National Statistics Office published the final report on its 2021 Census of Population and Housing, showing that for the first time ever, there were more males than females within the Maltese population. Malta remains the most densely populated country in the EU with 1,649 residents per square kilometre.

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5% of Maltese population is of Asian origin – NSO

Malta’s population is almost 90% Caucasian and 83% Roman Catholic, according to new census data revealed by the National Statistics Office. 5.2%, or approximately 27,000 people, are of Asian origin. A further 1.2% of the population is listed as having multiple ethnicities. The census also reveals that 5.1% of the population, or just over 23,000 people, do not identify with a religion, whilst 82.6%, describe themselves as Roman Catholic. The presence of other religions such as Islam at 3.9% and Orthodox at 3.6% is recorded for the first time in a census. More than one in five residents were foreign, with 115,449 non-Maltese persons residing in Malta as of November 2021, an increase of more than five times in the share of foreigners since 2011.(Times of Malta)

Domestic demand to drive growth in 2023 – CBM
In 2023, domestic demand is expected to be the main driver of growth as investment begins to recover after last year’s contraction, the Central Bank of Malta said. In a report, the CBM said that while consumption is expected to remain relatively robust The net export contribution is expected to be marginal in 2023, as exports should grow at a significantly slower rate following the strong rebound seen in 2022. Although the contribution of net exports is set to edge up slightly in 2024 and 2025, domestic demand is then expected to remain the main driver of growth in those years. (The Malta Independent)

Full-time employees increase by 6.4% to 257,479 – NSO
By end of the third quarter of last year, the workforce in our country continued to register an increase in full-time and part-time employment. Statistics provided by Jobsplus shows that over a period of one year, full-time work went up to 257,479 or 6.4%. The statistics office said that this increase its attributed to an increase of 15,447 full-time employees and a reduction of 397 people registering for work.