Malta is not expected to go into recession this year, despite a marginal contraction in GDP registered during the last three months of 2011.

Enemalta lost about €30m after its fuel bill shot up

Economists define a recession as two quarters of negative economic growth.

Following robust expansion in the first three quarters of 2011, the National Statistics Office figures showed a contraction of 0.1 per cent between September and December.

But NSO officials said this was a one-off result stemming from the loss made by Enemalta during the year and which was only included in the GDP calculations of the last quarter.

The loss resulted from higher fuel prices and subsequently steeper costs to produce energy

According to unofficial preliminary figures seen by The Times, in 2011 Enemalta lost about €30 million after its fuel bill shot up by €80 million over 2010 due to higher oil prices and also after it started using a more expensive but more environment-friendly low-sulphur oil.

However, all other economic sectors continued to grow steadily, including exports, tourism earnings and retail.

“This was just a one-off and Malta is expected to continue registering sustained growth even in 2012,” a senior NSO official said.

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech said: “The government has no indication of a looming recession. On the contrary, we have strong indications that the Maltese economy will continue to grow steadily, even this year.”

He noted that, if Enemalta’s results had been left out of the GDP figures for the fourth quarter, the economy would have shown the same growth levels as in previous months.

The country registered 2.1 per cent growth last year, higher than the average 1.4 per cent seen by the eurozone and its sixth best performer.

The highest growth rate was seen by Estonia, at 7.6 per cent, while Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Greece were in recessionary territory in the last quarter of 2011.