I refer to Michael Briguglio’s article titled ‘When the price of bread goes up’ (July, 2).

I would expect any academic not to warp the facts to suit any political arguments he may wish to make. This is what he did when he claimed the government based its economic model on an unsustainable acceleration making us increasingly dependent on “a small number of sectors”.

The facts are that the share of the three biggest sectors of the economy in the country’s gross value added has decreased from 69.4 per cent in 1997 to 49.3 per cent in 2017, that of the biggest four has gone down from 75.6 per cent to 64.4 per cent and that of the biggest six dropped from 86.8 per cent to 77.6 per cent. This shows economy has been diversified. A comparison between 2013 and 2017 confirms this diversification trend, even though the changes are of a different magnitude.

I would also point out that nine out of 10 sectors have seen their GVA ranking change, sometimes multiple times, during the 20-year period, showing the dynamic nature of the economy. The highest-growth sectors in terms of shares increased their contribution to GVA from 17.5 per cent to 41.3 per cent but only one of these sectors (arts and entertainment) has had an extraordinary growth, from a share of 2.9 per cent to 13.2 per cent.

Though not mentioned by Briguglio, the share of public administration is now back to 70 per cent, lower than it was between 1997 and 2012.

The share of construction, in which, according to the doomsayers, there is a bubble, had gone down from 5.7 per cent to 3.6 per cent.

As to claims regarding the “current economic bubble”, none of the international institutions surveying the Maltese economy have described the economic growth path as a bubble and GDP growth is expected to remain above the EU average even though at a lower rate.