Malta's economic growth reached almost 9% in the second quarter of this year, while unemployment in July hit another record low, official data issued on Monday shows.

The National Statistics Office said the drivers behind the GDP growth were service activities and industry, notably accommodation and food service activities, information and communication, wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, arts, entertainment, recreation and transport and storage.Net taxes on products contributed positively towards GDP growth, with an increase of 8.2 per cent in volume terms. 

Construction had a negative contribution of 0.2 percentage points. Agriculture and fishing had a neutral impact on GVA growth in volume terms.

The contribution of domestic demand to the year-on-year GDP growth rate in volume terms was 4.5 percentage points, with final consumption expenditure having a positive contribution of 7.5 percentage points and gross capital formation contributing negatively by 3.0 percentage points.

External demand also registered a positive contribution of 4.5 percentage points, with 9.9 percentage points attributable to exports and 5.5 percentage points explained by imports. 

Read the full NSO statement in full by clicking on the pdf below. 

Unemployment falls

The NSO said that in July the number of persons registering for work stood at 925, decreasing by 617 when compared to the corresponding month in 2021.

Unemployment fell across all age groups for both men and women. Men accounted for 71.8 per cent of total registrants while women accounted for the remaining 28.2 per cent (Table 1).Persons who had been registering for work for less than 21 weeks and those who had been registering between 21 and 52 weeks decreased when compared to the same month in 2021.