Nearly half of Gozo businesses that participated in a recent survey said the increase in the cost of living allowance will force a price increase for their services.

The other half however said that there will be no increases to cover for the COLA wage increase. 

The government announced last month that workers will receive an extra €9.90 a week from January as part of the automatically-calculated adjustment, which is intended to combat the impacts of inflation. In 2021, COLA stood at €1.75 while in 2020, COLA reached €3.49 a week.

According to an online survey carried out over the past two weeks by the Gozo Tourism Association, 14% of the members believe the COLA increase is a tough measure for their establishment.

When respondents were asked if they will be increasing their prices and rates to cover the COLA wage increase, 45% said they will definitely increase them, while another 45% said there will be no increases.

Answering questions linked to the government's budget for 2023, more than one-third of participants said their businesses will be positively affected by the state's subsidy of energy bills.

31% meanwhile said the budget lacked enough measures that will directly impact tourism.

The survey focused mainly on the performance of the Gozitan tourism establishments during the first nine months of 2022.

Around 69% of the establishments reported better business when compared to 2021, with 21% saying their performance was equal to that of the first nine months 2021.

10% reported a drop in business.

This improvement was corroborated further when 62% of respondents declared that the performance of their business during the summer months was better than that of the same period of 2021, with 28% saying that the performance of their business was equal to that of the previous summer.