Water leakage has been reduced by nearly 11 per cent a year over the last four years, according the National Statistics Office.

By 2007, the amount of water lost through leakages in the distribution network had almost been halved from the maximum it had reached in 2003, when over 11 million cubic metres of water were lost. Since then, the amount of water lost has gone down every year to a low of 5.6 million cubic metres last year.

The newly-released figures show that just under 30.8 million cubic metres of water was consumed throughout 2007.

From 2002 to 2007, an average of 45.12 per cent of all water production in Malta came from groundwater, while 54.88 per cent was generated by desalination plants,

These percentages fluctuated from one year to the other, although desalinated water always constituted the major share of water produced.

The total amount of water produced has decreased by an average of 1.85 per cent per annum.

When water production and supply patterns are compared, the amount of end-of-year water reserves is fairly stable from one year to another and amounts to about 300,000 cubic metres of water each year.

Due to this proximity in production and supply, the end-of-year water reserves on average amount to just 0.9 per cent of the water produced annually.