Press Release: Malta Chamber of SMEs welcomes launch of direct flights to New York
17 September 2025
The Malta Chamber of SMEs welcomes the positive news that direct flights between Malta International...
From Winter Chill to Summer Heat.. One surcharge too high!!!
04 June 2008
One cannot say that surcharge on water and electricity is one of GRTU's most favourite topics. GRTU has objected to the way the surcharge operates since its inception.
It's simply not true that GRTU has at MCESD or elsewhere ever approved the way this surcharge is operated. It's a hideous little bit of bureaucracy with devastating negative effects on many small businesses and there is no way GRTU can ever approve this little monster.
It is a schemed designed to support large businesses from certain economic sectors at the expense of all others from other economic areas. Small businesses are forced to subsidies larger businesses irrespective of the level of electricity they consume to provide the goods or service their enterprise provide and there is no relief whatsoever.
Supermarkets, mini markets, confectioners, bakers, restaurants, hairdressers, sprayers, mechanics, tool shops, craftsmen, all those who use electricity as an essential input to their production suffer the full cost as capping is restricted to the few.
GRTU calls this gross discrimination and believes it to be in breach of the EU electricity Directives as it provides a crude form of cross subsidisation, indeed the crudest, as the small are forced to subsidise the large.
Again GRTU went to the EU Commission for relief and raise the matter in the EU Parliament, but who out there wants to listen to the small Maltese businesses. It's all talk bla, bla, bla and nothing else.
GRTU again raised the surcharge issue at MCESD. The system is wrong whatever else the designers of this crude bit of imposition love to say. They don't want to listen, but we won't stop complaining either.
