QUARTERLY REVIEW 2014 Vol. 47 No. 2 © Central Bank of Malta, 2014 Address Pjazza Kastilja Valletta VLT 1060 Malta Telephone (+356) 2550 0000 Fax (+356) 2550 2500 Website http://www.centralbankmalta.org E-mail
[email protected] Printed by Gutenberg Press Ltd Gudja Road Tarxien, Malta All rights reserved. Reproduction is permitted provided that the source is acknowledged. The cut-off date for statistical information published in the Economic Survey of this Review is 14 August 2014. Figures in tables may not add up due to rounding. ISSN 0008-9273 (print) ISSN 1811-1254 (online) CONTENTS FOREWORD 5 ECONOMIC SURVEY 8 1. International Economic Developments and the Euro Area Economy 8 International economic developments International financial markets Commodities Economic and monetary developments in the euro area 2. Output and Employment 20 GDP and industrial production Box 1: Tourism activity Box 2: Business and consumer surveys The labour market Box 3: Developments in Malta’s structural unemployment 3. Prices, Costs and Competitiveness 38 HICP inflation Box 4: Communicating uncertainty – a fan chart for HICP projections RPI inflation Box 5: Residential property prices Costs and competitiveness 4. The Balance of Payments 50 The current account The capital and financial account International investment position 5. Government Finance 55 General government Consolidated Fund General government debt Box 6: Estimating the cyclically adjusted budget balance 6. Monetary and Financial Developments 67 Monetary aggregates and their counterparts