Finance Minister Edward Scicluna would not say how much credit ratings agencies were paid on an individual basis, insisting the information was commercially sensitive.

In reply to a parliamentary question by Nationalist MP Simon Busuttil, who requested a breakdown of payments to the different rating agencies, the Finance Minister said he could not table the information as this was of a “commercial nature”.

Asked by Dr Busuttil to table copies of the contracts between the government and the credit rating agencies, Prof. Scicluna insisted that the contracts, which were between the Finance Ministry and the agencies, would be supplied once the government had “permission” to do so. He again cited commercial sensitivity as the reason for such a decision.

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Fees paid to credit rating agencies, independent companies that assign ratings which reflect the ability of a debtor to pay back debt, made headlines in the past weeks after it emerged that the payments by the government soared in recent years.

According to information made public last month, since 2013, the payments have reached new highs, with the government forking out a total of €237,502 last year alone. In 2013, this figure stood at €121,119.

Despite this, the Finance Minister claimed last week that such payments had not “exploded”, insisting that the country had been paying for such ratings for years, even before the Labour Party returned to power in 2013.

The Finance Ministry has yet to provide information on the payments prior to 2013, with questions sent last week remaining unanswered by the time of going to print.

In recent years, the government has referred to the ratings by a number of such agencies, including those by world-renowned agencies like Fitch, DBRS, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, when speaking about Malta’s booming economy.