In accordance with Council Regulation (EC) No 3605/93, Malta has submitted its second report for 2004 of government deficit and debt levels. This submission drew on, and updated, the first exercise submitted to the Commission on 1 March, and which was reported by the NSO through News Release 43/2004 dated 16 March.

Extra Budgetary Units

The 2003 balance for the extra-budgetary units has been revised from -Lm22.1 million last March to -Lm22.6 million in September. This was due to a number of revisions by each entity, but mainly by a specific state-owned agency which published its audited financial statements for the 2000-2003 period in April this year, that is after the first notification had been submitted. Moreover these accounts recorded the write off of a bank loan in the year 2000 which naturally had a major impact on the deficit for the year 2000 as well as on the debt position on the complete time series.

Local Government

As far as 2003 is concerned, the data was revised using the actual financial statements of the local councils which have since become available. This update brought down their net lending/borrowing from a surplus of Lm0.47 million to a deficit of Lm0.52 million.

Gross Domestic Product

The GDP aggregates have been revised by the NSO, and their compilation for the years 2000-2003 is based on ESA 95 methodology. The GDP for 2003, which was originally estimated at Lm1,818.3 million, has now been revised to Lm1,827.3 million.