€1.5 million spent on Valletta 2018’s opening celebrations

Amount roughly equivalent to spending on EU accession celebrations

3 October 2018, 5:24pm
by Massimo Costa

1 min read

Valletta 2018's opening week in January cost over €1.5 million

Valletta 2018’s Opening Week celebrations, held between 14 to 21 January, cost a total of over €1.5 million, Owen Bonnici said.

Bonnici, who was replying to a parliamentary question today by Nationalist Party MP Robert Cutajar, said that this was roughly equivalent to the amount spent on Malta’s European Union accession celebrations in May 2004.

The highlight of the Opening Week took place on 20 January, when the capital’s “Four Squares” shows were kicked off, with Bonnici saying that the entire event attracted an estimated 13,000 tourists to Malta.

Around €8.6 million was injected, directly or indirectly, to the Maltese economy by tourism related to the celebrations, Bonnici added.

Massimo Costa joined MaltaToday as a journalist in 2017.