Certain sectors of the economy were still going through substantial problems although the government boasted that the country was out of the recession, the Labour Party's spokesman for the self-employed said.

In a statement, Gavin Gulia said that one such sector was the property market.

While the government opted to interpret statistics in a limited matter to give the impression that this market was out of problems, the situation was to the contrary.

The marginal 0.4 per cent increase in the price of property was lower than the 0.8 per cent inflation rate and in real terms this meant that the cost of property was still going down.

Dr Gulia said that although it was reported that the sales volume increased by nearly four per cent in the first quarter, compared to the same period last year, if the volume was compared to the last quarter of 2009 one would see an 11 per cent drop.

Since there were no seasonal issues in this case, such comparisons were legitimate, he said.

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