A taxi driver was fined €58.23 (Lm25) for overcharging a tourist by €6 (Lm2.58) earlier this month.

Public transport director Vince Micallef Pulè said the taxi driver was found not to have used the taxi meter when he took the tourist from his hotel to the airport.

The tourist contacted the National Euro Changeover Committee from Rome to lodge a complaint and is being refunded. He added that, since the currency changeover, the Malta Transport Authority has received very few complaints, especially considering that some 87,000 people travel on buses daily.

This complaint was one of about 300 received by the NECC since Malta changed currency on January 1.

Speaking during a press conference yesterday, NECC executive director Alan Camilleri said the committee has issued 39 warning letters over price rises, while in another 39 cases ­businessmen have reverted to original prices after the matter was brought to their attention verbally.

"On the whole we are satisfied with the behaviour of shopkeepers. Almost all prices have been converted in the right way," he said, adding that in two or three weeks' time the committee would be publishing the result of its price movement analysis.

Mr Camilleri expressed his belief that consumers get the impression prices have been raised whenever they see a rounded figure, adding that there have been cases when prices have in fact been rounded down. He said businesses tend to adjust prices twice a year, something that was never before deemed as abuse. When it comes to vending machines, he said, some products have been rounded up and others down.

Referring to the rounding of SMS prices, Mr Camilleri said this was a "perfectly legal and correct" mathematical process. He said if any profits emerge from this technical rounding up, the NECC "quite forcibly" encouraged the mobile company to re-channel those back into incentives to consumers.

He said research abroad shows that technical rounding across all prices has a net impact on the cost of living of around 0.002 per cent since there are items which are rounded up and others which are rounded down.

Questioned about counterfeit currency, Mr Camilleri said it does not seem there is any concern, adding that the Central Bank has special equipment for the identification of counterfeits. He said a report published by the European Central Bank a couple of days ago showed that the amount of counterfeit euros in the euro area had decreased.

The NECC had been informed of a couple of incidents where somebody tried to pay with dummy notes which had been prepared for children.

He said up to Sunday evening €247 million (Lm106.04 million) had been withdrawn from banks. Two weeks after euro adoption, 92 per cent of Maltese are paying in euros only.

Malta's changeover was lauded by members of the former Austrian Price Commission, which had been responsible for changeover preparations in Austria and who helped the NECC with changeover preparations.

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Labour official Walter Fuchs said light heartedly that if his country were ever to go for another changeover, it would follow Malta's example. Karl Kollman, from the Austrian Chamber of Labour, said Malta had built a safe environment for consumers with an extensive tracking of prices and monitoring of the market.

Mr Camilleri said in the coming months the NECC will be collecting the strategies it used during its campaign into a tool kit that the EU could give to other countries adopting the euro.

He said it was difficult to estimate when Maltese people will forget the Maltese lira and start thinking solely in euros. While it was easier to start thinking in euros when it came to everyday items, it was more difficult to do so for ­something that is not acquired often, such as a car.