"Malta’s economy grew from about €8bn in 2013 to nearly €23bn today."

The claim in context

Prime Minister Robert Abela frequently cites the trajectory of Malta's nominal GDP — "from about €8 billion in 2013 to nearly €23 billion today" — to summarise the economy's expansion under successive Labour governments. This roughly tripling of nominal output is one of the central planks of the government's economic narrative.

What the official series shows

The 2024 nominal GDP figure of approximately €23.1 billion is confirmed by PwC's analysis of Ministry of Finance data and matches the NSO's national accounts release. The 2013 starting point of around €8 billion is broadly consistent with NSO's long-run series, although the precise figure varies slightly by methodology revision.

The factor-of-three expansion is genuine. The honest caveat is that this is nominal growth, which includes inflation. In real (inflation-adjusted) terms the expansion is meaningfully smaller — somewhere in the 75–90% range — but still impressive by EU standards.

Bottom line

The headline figures check out. The framing as "the economy grew" is fair as a summary, with a caveat about real vs nominal.