Drop in expenditure, income of band clubs

Band club's expenditure dropped by 5.7 per cent and income by 1.5 per cent last year when compared to 2006, the National Statistics Office said yesterday.

Last year, expenditure amounted to €2,602,334 compared to €2,759,236 in 2006 and €2,436,389 in 2005. The bulk of the expenditure - 40 per cent - consisted of remuneration to bandsmen.

Income last year amounted to €2,562,874 against €2,601,516 in 2006. Income in 2005 amounted to €2,541,951. Donations made up 31.2 per cent of the total income.

Band clubs spent less on the training of bandsmen, from €134,428 in 2005, to €110,467 in 2006 and €97,667 in 2007.

There were 92 band clubs in operation with the total number of bandsmen, both resident and trainees, totalling 3,994, a slide of 4.2 per cent with respect to 2005. Band club membership stood at 25,357 members - an increase of 4.7 per cent over the 24,226 members in 2005.

Although not exclusively the domain of men, this sector is primarily dominated by males. In fact, 77.1 per cent of band club members were men.

However, there was an increase of resident female bandsmen during 2007. In fact, the percentage of resident female bandsmen amounted to 25.3 per cent of all the participants within this category - an increase of nearly one per cent over the previous year.

A total of 1,260 band programmes were performed throughout Malta and Gozo. Of these, 62.5 per cent were held within the same locality as the band club.