The Chamber of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises - GRTU yesterday suggested that the National Statistics Office start publishing the indices, technically known as deflators, used to calculate the Gross Domestic Product in order to ensure transparency in the workings.

GRTU director general Vince Farrugia said the NSO should also have its own head and the regulator should be a separate entity. At the moment, Reno Camilleri, chairman of the Malta Statistics Authority, doubles up as the NSO's acting director general because no replacement was found since the departure of Gordon ­Cordina. Dr Cordina had resigned amid a political controversy and harsh comments by the Labour Party after a revision of statistics. The revision was proved correct by the EU's ­statistics office Eurostat.

Mr Farrugia said it was incredible how no replacement could be found and the persons who were interviewed when Dr Cordina was appointed should be hired to lead the NSO if need be.

The GRTU had commissioned Joseph Falzon to draw up a paper to study real GDP growth in the third quarter of 2007 and the analysis showed that this stood at 1.94 per cent and not 4.14 per cent, as given by the NSO.

Asked why one should accept Prof. ­Falzon's figures, drawn using indices he derived himself, when the NSO's work was audited by Eurostat, Mr Farrugia said the indices Prof. Falzon used were based on the NSO's own figures and the whole point of the exercise was to highlight the need for the NSO to publish the full data so that this could be checked.

Contacted for a reaction, Mr Camilleri said it was his wish that a head for the NSO was found, but, unfortunately, no one had yet been found locally.

Regarding the issue of publication of the deflators, Mr Camilleri said it was something he would certainly consider.

Questioned about Prof. Falzon's workings, Mr Camilleri said he wanted to look into them in a little more depth.

"At face value, the report makes some wrong assumptions. We have our own method of ­calculating deflation, which is the same one used in EU countries. The mechanism is a very complex and technical one because GDP is made up of five aggregates - consumption expenditure of households, of government, gross fixed capital formation (which is split in two, buildings and machinery), imports of goods and services and exports of goods and services. These are deflated by a number of indices. It is an immensely complex process that would take three lectures to explain," Mr Camilleri said.