The GRTU, Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises, yesterday asked the EU’s statistical arm, the Eurostat, to explain “the discrepancy” of figures Eurostat has published.

The GRTU was referring to the rate of expansion of the gross domestic product in 2007, which had nothing to do with the point the GRTU had raised after publication by the National Statistics Office of its report on GDP expansion for the third quarter of last year.

The GRTU said Eurostat last 9 January said that the GDP expansion in the third quarter of last year was 0.1 per cent. Last Thursday Eurostat adjusted this to 4.3 per cent, giving no explanation for this, nor saying what had caused this radical change.

No such drastic correction was made in relation to other countries and though changes were made occasionally, these were always marginal, not so wide. The GRTU said it had criticised the NSO figures and maintained that the GDP growth was neither 0.1 per cent, as Eurostat had claimed, but nor was it 4.1 per cent, as calculated by the NSO. The GRTU said its conclusion, after a scientific study, was that growth was closer to two per cent.

The GRTU said it was clear that when the NSO used a negative deflator to calculate the Household Final Consumption Expenditure in real terms, it appeared unjustified because there was no indication – either in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, or in the Retail Price Index – that inflation in the third quarter of 2007 had been negative. No one in Malta believes that the cost of living had gone done in mid-2007.

The effect of what the NSO had presented was that the GDP in Malta had expanded by twice the amount which the GRTU analysis had arrived at.

The GRTU said that yesterday it asked Eurostat to explain the discrepancy, once the Malta Statistics Authority had failed to reply to the points the GRTU had made. It was hoped that the NSO and Eurostat would clear the situation before a report was issued, in the first week of March, about the GDP for the last quarter of 2007, the GRTU said.