Malta has already lost €43,000 in payment on higher interest rates paid on the loan facility agreements to Greece.

In a presentation on the Greece bailout situation, the Permanent Secretary at the Finance Ministry Alfred Camilleri told the House Economic and Financial Committee that this loss would increase to €369,000 a year under the second bail out agreement with Greece if interest rates on Malta government bonds were not revised.

The Committee, under the chairmanship of Labour MP Silvio Schembri, was discussing the amendment to the legislation on the loan made to Greece under the agreement on the borrowing facility signed in Brussels last December.

Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said that lessons had to be learnt from this situation. Malta’s share in this burden was no different from that carried by other EU states even though Malta was the smallest EU state. This made its burden higher than that of bigger countries like Germany.

IMF reports also showed that a lot of time had been taken to react to the Greek and Cypriot financial problems while projections were too optimistic. This delay gave time to private investors to withdraw their investments.

Opposition spokesman on finance Tonio Fenech gave his reaction but switched off the microphone not to be recorded.

He later explained that the burden under the second bailout agreement to Greece was held by the respective contributing governments including Malta. The ECB had committed itself to give a share of its profits to national central banks to pass over to respective governments to finance this borrowing.

Mr Camilleri confirmed that the ECB agreement was still in force. Malta had paid €50.6 million out of its €74.5 million contribution to the Greek bailout.

He added the Greek reform programme was giving results.