The facts and Clyde Caruana’s myths – Eddie Aquilina

What’s this year’s GDP level? What is the GDP forecast for next year? It’s a constant referral on the PBS news channel thumped out as good news. But does a country’s GDP convey reality on its streets? It is an indication of economic activity but it says absolutely nothing about inequality of wealth.
On budget day, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said the years of Nationalist rule that ended in 2013 had “destroyed the economy”.
So I did a study of Malta’s GDP per capita (GDP/PC) to try and see what really happened.

In 1986, Malta’s GDP/PC was $4,194 with the population at 342,000. It rose to $22,527 in 2012 with the population at 397,000. In 2021, the GDP/PC rose to $33,257 with the population now at 516,000 (data source World Bank).
The above statistics show a GDP/PC that, in the period 1987 to 2013, had increased nominally by more than 500 per cent, compared to the last nine years period where the GDP/PC increased by 50 per cent.
In other terms, also factoring in the population exponential, the former saw an average increase of 20 per cent per annum while the latter Muscat/Abela machine managed a smaller but respectful five per cent per annum rate.
These figures assume that the...