A total of 135 objections were filed last year with the Public Contracts Appeals Board against government tenders but only five per cent were upheld.

Four out of five applications were rejected as they were based on "trivial" grounds. The total value of the contracts against which an appeal was filed was of €73 million.

This was announced this morning when Finance Minister Edward Scicluna presented the first ever annual report of the review board in which it outlined the reasons for its decisions.

The board which was appointed in April last year was urged to clear the backlog of cases, as this issue had also been highlighted by the EU. The finance minister said that by the end of last year the backlog of cases had been reduced to 14.

Trivial cases included ones in which applicants were not fully aware that they had breached the conditions of the bid in the first place.

The majority of complaints were filed on contracts whose value was between €12,000 and €120,000.

Board chairman Anthony J Cassar remarked that the €400 fee to file an appeal encouraged bidders to "take a chance as if this was a Super 5 lottery".

However, the minister said that there were no plans to raise this fee, adding that the EU was pushing for the removal of such fees.

On his part, Dr Cassar added the number of appeals filed in Malta was much higher than in other European countries such as Germany and the UK, where only a handful of objections were filed in an entire year.