ECB revises Malta debt figure down by €600m after PN claim sparks row

The European Central Bank has corrected its figures for Malta’s overall debt, revising them downwards by almost €600 million on Thursday afternoon, after admitting it had made a mistake in its calculations.

On Wednesday, PN leader Alex Borg had pointed to the ECB’s figures, which at the time showed Malta’s total non-consolidated debt as having risen to €11.9 billion, during a party rally in Naxxar.

He claimed that the data showed that Malta had borrowed €1 billion between March and April, telling party supporters that the government had intentionally kept the figures hidden by postponing a planned release of financial data on the eve of the election.

PN, as well as party finance shadow minister Adrian Delia, repeated the claim on Thursday, accusing the government of having spent this money on pre-election favours.

This provoked a strong reaction from finance minister Clyde Caruana, who labelled Borg “financially illiterate” on Thursday morning, saying Malta “does not even spend that amount in an entire year,” let alone a month.

Meanwhile, a Labour Party statement said Borg’s figures referred to non-consolidated, rather than consolidated debt, the metric typically used to list a government’s general debt.

Non-consolidated debt refers to the sum total of debt accrued by the government, including debt that the government owes its own public entities and government bodies. These are then removed when calculating the government’s consolidated debt, or the money it owes external entities.

Malta's debt was 'overstated', ECB says

However, on Thursday afternoon, the ECB said it had made a mistake in its calculations, with Malta’s debt standing at €11.3 billion, rather than the €11.9 billion it had initially listed when publishing the figures earlier this week.

The correction issued by the European Central Bank on Thursday afternoon.

“The provisional figures for Malta’s total debt securities issued by the general government as at end-April 2026 are overstated,” the ECB said. “The actual figures should amount to €11.353 billion. These figures will be revised in the next publication”.

This suggests that Malta’s non-consolidated debt has risen by €377 million between March and April, rather than the almost €1 billion initially listed.

Malta’s debt and borrowing levels have unexpectedly taken centre stage at the tail-end of an electoral campaign largely dominated by a spending arms race between the two parties.

On Monday morning, Robert Abela said Labour’s manifesto would cost a total of €6.3 billion over the coming five-year legislature, with Alex Borg later saying the PN manifesto would cost €6.7 billion.