The Gozo Business Chamber yesterday called on Gozo Channel Co. Ltd to reduce its ferry fares after statistics showed that the company carried 27,193 fewer vehicles and 64,463 less passengers in the first five months of this year compared with the same period in 2004.

Call for reduced fares

Statistics on the company's website show that in the first five months of 2004 Gozo Channel carried 349,504 vehicles and 1,266,605 passengers whereas the respective figures for the corresponding period this year are 322,311 and 1,202,212.

Gozo Channel also operated fewer trips during this period, with 7,464 in 2004 and 7,160 this year.

The chamber described the figures as alarming, and blamed them on the increases in Gozo Channel's fares.

The chamber said the figures also confirmed the decline in the economic performance of the island. "This situation was regrettably envisaged in the report which the chamber, together with the Gozo Tourism Association, commissioned prior to the increase in the fares of Gozo Channel in June 2004."

The chamber said its appeals to the Investment Ministry not to increase the Gozo Channel fares again this month had been met with derision by the ministry which accused it of "lobbying its interests, even when these fly in the face of basic business and social tenets".

"The ministry, like the chamber, is now confronted by irrefutable figures which show an unprecedented decline in the number of passengers and vehicles. The blow to the Gozo economy through the increase in Gozo Channel fares has now been confirmed.

"The chamber appeals to the ministry to revoke with immediate effect all increases implemented in the past year so that the economy of the sister island would be given the boost it direly needs. In the end the decline in the number of vehicles and passengers is dealing the death blow to Gozo Channel Company Limited," it said.

However, the ministry said in a reply: "The GBC must certainly realise that any possible negative impact of ticket price increases would have been registered immediately upon the introduction of such an increase, and not six months earlier.

It has been a year since the ticket prices were modified in June 2004. It is now therefore possible to compare an entire year of Gozo Channel's business after the introduction of the increased rates with an equivalent entire year before June 2004.

"Gozo Channel has actually experienced a small increase in traffic between June 1, 2003 and May 30, 2004 compared with the year between June 1, 2004 (the day the new tariffs were introduced) and May 30."

The ministry said there were 53,707 more passengers on Gozo Channel ferries in the first five months after the introduction of the new rates (July-December 2004) than during the same months of the previous year.

"The GBC chooses to ignore that balance and again lobbies what it perceives to be its interests, even as doing so, it flies in the face of basic business facts," the ministry said.

The National Statistics Office yesterday released figures for the first quarter of this year, which show a drop in vehicle traffic of 15,195 and 30,448 fewer passengers.

Over the past five years, Gozo Channel has rarely registered any drop in traffic. On the contrary, it had enjoyed steady year on year rises from 737,782 vehicles and 3,068,516 passengers in 2000 to 917,124 vehicles and 3,512,400 passengers in 2004.

According to the NSO, the Malita, Gozo Channel's largest vessel, carried 271,895 passengers or 43.4 per cent of the total in the first quarter. The other two ferries, Gaudos and Ta'Pinu carried 211,238 and 142,865 passengers respectively.