A “milestone” five-year agreement, signed yesterday between MSC Cruises and Viset, which manages the Valletta cruise liner terminal, is expected to pump over €10 million each year into Malta’s economy.

The agreement, which spans between 2011 and 2015, would see about 150,000 passengers next year each spending an average of €70 during their visit to the island, MSC Cruises chief executive Pierfrancesco Vago said.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said the signing of the agreement was “an important milestone” the cruise liner reality in Malta had reached. This was in line with the government’s 2015 vision. He said MSC also had a large fleet of merchant ships and had decided to register 10 of them under the Maltese flag.

Mr Vago said the company had been linked to Malta since 2002 and he was pleased to confirm the new partnership. Next year, he said, five cruise liners would call at Valletta’s terminal 34 times.

The ships would include Fantasia, Musica, Armonia, Melody and Splendida.

Viset chairman Anton Micallef pointed this was an unprecedented agreement that was “the stuff of fairytales”. It came after a €35 million investment in the infrastructure of Viset’s facilities.

MSC, he added, would be looking at the possibility of its liners staying here overnight during their visits and had committed itself to have an overnight stay on New Year’s eve next year.

Figures released by the National Statistics Office showed cruise passengers visiting Malta between January and October increased by 14 per cent, to over 418,000, when compared to the same period last year. Over 58,700 cruise passengers arrived in October, an increase of 3.8 per cent over October 2009.

The majority of passengers were aged between 60 and 79 and were mostly women. In fact, women surpassed men by 2,058, amounting to a total of 30,401. On average, there were 1,399 cruise passengers per vessel.