Minister Silvio Schembri gives a statistical update on the second €100 voucher scheme and reiterates that those eligible are extensively utilising their vouchers
Since the scheme’s inception on 7th June 2021, more than €16 million in vouchers have been redeemed through 500,000 transactions carried out at several Maltese and Gozitan businesses. This was stated at a press conference addressed by Minister for the Economy and Industry Silvio Schembri, in which he gave a statistical update on the second €100 voucher scheme, which instituted an investment of €50 million in the regeneration of our country’s economy.
Minister Schembri recalled how this edition saw the introduction of the digital voucher facility, wherein these could be downloaded to smartphones. He went on to explain how the €16 million redeemed vouchers are divided into €6 million digital vouchers and €10 million printed vouchers. “All this shows how the public is evidently making good use of the vouchers, as they are being used continuously and consistently,” said the Minister.
He added that, if one observes the voucher transactions on a daily basis, they will find an average of around €390,000 in transaction value, every day from Monday to Thursday. The value of weekend transactions doubles, as the value from Friday to Sunday reaches €624,000 per day.
The Minister for the Economy recalled how the vouchers are divided into red ones, to be used in restaurants and accommodation, and blue ones, to be used in services and retail. Here, he noted how €9.2 million were redeemed in red vouchers and €6.9 million were redeemed in blue vouchers, at a total of 6,677 businesses. There are 4,092 businesses which are accepting blue vouchers and 2,585 businesses which are utilising red vouchers. In fact, he noted that a number of enterprises seized the opportunity to create their own offers related to the vouchers, with some even doubling the value of the vouchers if these were used at their business. He appealed to businesses to keep a copy of the printed vouchers and the serial number of the same vouchers for accounting purposes, in addition to keeping VAT receipts. This is important, as from time to time MIMCOL, which is leading the process, will be carrying out audit exercises.
During the press conference, Minister Schembri also spoke about the process of the distributing of printed vouchers by MaltaPost to residential addresses – a process which was concluded on Saturday, 4th July, and in which vouchers were distributed to 290,652 of the 328,503 people who were entitled to printed vouchers. This means that there are still 37,851 people who have yet to collect their vouchers from the MaltaPost offices in Malta and Gozo. “We had people tell us that they didn’t know from where to get their vouchers, perhaps because of a change in their postal address, or perhaps for other reasons. Therefore, we sought to facilitate the process. We have added a facility on the MIMCOL vouchersmimcol.com website where people can input their ID card number and the document number on the back, and they will be given an indication from which MaltaPost office their vouchers can be collected,” said Minister Schembri.
Finally, Minister Schembri recalled the helpline numbers for any information required both by the public as well as businesses. So far, 33,311 calls and 11,600 emails have been responded to and acknowledged.
• Consumer Helpline 8007 4904
• Email consumers@vouchersmimcol.com
• Business Helpline 8007 4950
• Email business@vouchersmimcol.com
Source: Office of the Prime Minister