Government €100 vouchers: household distribution reaches 220,000

You are not alone if you have not yet received the €100 government vouchers as the distribution has only passed the halfway mark, the Economy Ministry has confirmed.

The vouchers, part of government’s economic recovery plan, will be split into five €20 vouchers, and will be arriving via MaltaPost. Every person aged 16 and over is entitled to receive the vouchers.

A member of the household will have to sign for the vouchers, and will be allowed to collect them in the name of all the residing individuals.

The Economy Ministry said that 220,000 individuals out of 440,000 have received the vouchers.

“Maltapost is doing all it can to maximize resources to complete the distribution at the earliest possible,” a ministry spokesperson said.

The vouchers have to be spent by the end of September, a deadline which the ministry said has been kept despite not all people receiving the vouchers two weeks after the initiative was rolled out.

“So far, more than 4,000 businesses are accepting vouchers and redeeming them through the digital app,” the ministry said.

It also commended the fact that businesses are launching voucher related offers for the benefit of potential customers.

“This is considered very positively as such offers will lead to a bigger increase in domestic consumption,” the ministry said.

The vouchers will be issued against a valid ID card number, and will need to be spent by 30 September. Vouchers can be transferred from one individual to another, with government not monitoring where and on what they are spent.

Split into five, four vouchers will be red and one voucher will be blue.

Red vouchers may be used at bars, restaurants, hotels, accommodation businesses, while blue vouchers can be exchanged at any type of outlet that was ordered to close at the start of the public health emergency.

While no limit has been set on how much of the vouchers can be spent at once, monetary change cannot be given, and the vouchers cannot be exchanged for money.