The Central Bank of Malta has issued a statement criticising a Times of Malta fact-check that described Prime Minister Robert Abela’s claims on youth homeownership as misleading.

The row stems from comments Abela made during a recent interview with MeetInc, in which he rejected the idea that young people are being priced out of homeownership. The Prime Minister said that while around 82% of Maltese people own their home, the rate among those under 35 is even higher.

Referring to data collected by the Central Bank, Abela claimed that “nine out of ten” people under the age of 35 are homeowners, arguing that this does not support the public narrative of a housing affordability crisis.

In response, Times of Malta published a fact-check questioning the claim. The newspaper traced the figure back to the Central Bank’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) and noted that the statistic refers to households, not individuals.

Specifically, the Times reported that the 91% figure applies to households in which all members are under the age of 35, and therefore does not capture young adults who still live with parents or older relatives — a common arrangement in Malta. On that basis, it concluded that the Prime Minister’s wording was misleading.

The Central Bank has now pushed back strongly on that interpretation.

In a statement sent to the newspaper, the Bank said the Times had misread both the HFCS data and an earlier article written by Governor Alexander Demarco, on which the Prime Minister’s claim was based. It stressed that the HFCS is, by definition, a household-level survey and “can only refer to households and not individuals”.

The Bank also rejected the Times’ explanation that under-35s living with their parents “do not appear in the data at all”, saying these individuals are still included in the survey, but counted within older households rather than under-35-only ones.