The spending pattern of the Maltese has changed considerably over the years. Food used to take up the biggest part of income while these days it has declined considerably with communication, housing, education and health taking up a larger proportion of their spending.
According to Tonio Fenech, Finance Parliamentary Secretary, this did not mean that the Maltese were eating less, far from it, but due to the increase in their income, the Maltese can afford to allocate more of their money to other goods or services.
These trends were highlighted during the presentation of the Household Budgetary Survey (HBS) which is to be conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) over 2008. The coming HBS will include a novelty, as besides computing the Retail Price Index (RPI), which measures the change in prices and inflation, the survey will also try to compute an index for the elderly.
Malta Statistics Authority chairman Reno Camilleri explained that due to both the ever-growing number of senior citizens as well as their potential vulnerability, elders should have their own index in order to monitor their expenditure patterns and thus help legislate in their favour.
Mr Fenech said he was expecting that the fuel expenditure would take up a larger share of expenditure in the coming survey due to the international rise in fuel prices. He is also curious to see in which sector the well-off would diverge their extra purchasing power. The parliamentary secretary also pointed out that the survey would also monitor the spending patterns of the Maltese during the first year of the euro as Malta’s legal tender.
A first survey was carried out in 1925 to ascertain the change of standard of living of families in the wake of WWI. It started being held in its present form every five years from 1971.
The HBS is carried out over 12 months with a sample of 3,000 families participating. This is an extensive sample, said Mr Fenech, as exit polls were usually carried out on a 500-strong sample.
Mr Camilleri explained that initially, 6,500 samples would be selected out of Malta’s 140,000 households, as of the 2005 census.
The sample would then be scaled down to 3,000 as a number of households would be expected to refuse participation. Households, said Mr Camilleri, were selected randomly and were evenly distributed around Malta and Gozo. Those participating would have to record all their daily purchases in a journal for two weeks at a time with the assistance of NSO enumerators.
Mr Camilleri explained that a pilot project would be conducted between October and December with a sample of 100 families in order to test the validity of the survey and the clarity of questions asked.
The RPI is an important tool for economic policymaking as it measures the change in prices, thus also inflation. In fact, the Cost of Living Adjustment is given based on the RPI. Thus, said Mr Camilleri, the index would be used by the social partners to come up with wage adjustments as well as for contractual obligations, adjustment of rents and for statistical calculations.