Alcoholics anonymous: Malta does not provide data on household expenditure

Figures released by Eurostat on Tuesday show that households across the EU spent more than €130 billion on alcohol last year, but Malta was one of two countries which did not figure in the statistics.

While Eurostat said data for Croatia was not available, it noted that Malta’s data was “confidential”. The latest data available for Malta was published in January 2017, but no data for alcohol expenditure alone was made available.

The National Statistics Office’s Household Budgetary Survey showed that expenditure on alcoholic beverages and tobacco in 2015 stood at 2.4% of the total household expenditure.

The Eurostat figures put Estonia at the top of the list with a household expenditure on alcohol in 2017 of 5.2%. It was followed by its Baltic neighbours Latvia (4.9%) and Lithuania (4%).

The EU average stands at 1.6%, with Spain having the lowest proportion of household spending on alcohol, at 0.8%, while Italy and Greece both spent 0.9%.

Europe has the highest levels of alcohol consumption in the world, resulting in the highest share of all deaths attributable to alcohol consumption, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).