- 18-20-year-olds to get free six months gym membership
- €20 voucher book voucher for primary, middle and secondary students
- €150 ‘home library’ for vulnerable children under Scheme 9
Young adults between the ages of 18 to 20 will be provided six months of free gym membership, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana announced in the Budget speech.
The free gym subscription will be for those born in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
A six-month gym membership can cost anywhere between €225-€450 and most gyms provide a slight discount for students.
The measure was proposed by the fitness group Bulletproof Culture, who shared a video of former bodybuilder Robert Abela working out as part of their campaign to introduce free gym memberships for every 18-year-old.
For years, Malta has topped overweight and obesity lists, with predictions suggesting the problem that over a third of the adult population will be obese by 2030.
€20 book voucher for 2025 Book Fair
A €20 book voucher will be provided to all primary, middle and secondary school students to be used at the 2025 Malta Book Festival.
The measure is to help improve local literacy rates and help promote local publishers.
According to recent EU data, over half of all Maltese- and almost two-thirds of men- didn’t read a single book throughout 2022.
According to the data, only one in nine say they read more than ten books throughout the year, with a further 8 percent saying that their yearly tally was between five and nine books.
€150 ‘home library’ for vulnerable children
Another budget measure to tackle the literacy rate includes providing a €150 book voucher to vulnerable children under Scheme 9.
Around 2,500 children receive financial aid for their uniforms, photocopies and school lunches. The voucher will be used to provide the children with a ‘home library’.
