Malta and Estonia were the only two EU member states out of the 27 which last year managed to slash their structural deficit, Brussels said today.
On the other hand, all of the other 25 member states reported an increase in their deficit, some to quite high figures.
Publishing the second notification by member states to the Commission on the sate of their public finances in 2009, an obligation according to EU rules, Eurostat said that Malta ended 2009 with an impressive €57 million less in its deficit, a full one percentage point, than in 2008.
By the end of 2009, Malta’s structural deficit amounted to 3.8 per cent of GDP, down from 4.8 per cent. The island has to bring down its deficit to less than three per cent of GDP by the end of 2011 if it wants to avoid a possible €10 million fine to be imposed by the EU according to new rules agreed this week.
On the other hand, Malta’s debt levels in 2009 increased substantially over 2008 by €320 million, or 5.5 per cent of GDP on 2008.
Malta’s total debt at the end of 2009 stood at 68.6 per cent of GDP, much higher than the 60 per cent threshold allowed by EU rules.
Brussels also reported that during 2009, Malta cut its expenditure by almost one per cent of GDP although its revenue only increased by 0.1 per cent of GDP.
The EU’s statistics show that many of the other EU member states were hit much worse by the economic crisis than Malta, so much so that certain member states reported sky high deficits at the end of 2009.
The largest government deficits in percentage of GDP were recorded in Ireland (-14.4 per cent), the United Kingdom (-11.4 per cent), Spain (-11.1 per cent), Latvia (-10.2 per cent), Portugal (-9.3 per cent), Lithuania (-9.2 per cent), Romania (-8.6 per cent), Slovakia (-7.9 per cent), France (-7.5 per cent) and Poland (-7.2 per cent). No member state registered a government surplus in 2009.
Although Malta has a low deficit when compared to the rest of the EU, the same cannot be said where it come to debt as the island is among the heavy debited countries.
Eleven member states had government debt ratios higher than 60 per cent of GDP in 2009: Italy (116 per cent), Belgium (96.2 per cent), Hungary (78.4 per cent), France (78.1 per cent), Portugal (76.1 per cent), Germany (73.4 per cent), Malta (68.6 per cent), the United Kingdom (68.2 per cent), Austria (67.5 per cent), Ireland (65.5 per cent) and the Netherlands (60.8 per cent).