Malta makes money with igaming and money laundering. There's literally no other businesses there, other than basic necessities, and even these barely work. It's only focused on entertainment.
They import food and water. Malta is very hot during the summer. There's AC unit everywhere and it's a default cooling unit as well, as there's no "European winter" there. Everyone collects rain water and stores it on the roof.
They are one tsunami away from being decimated.
There's one company renting servers and it's full of online casinos, just so the companies meet the regulatory requirement.
Malta is the worst place on earth to have a data center I can think of.
Up until 2026 you could also buy a eu passport in Malta for ~690k euro.
Literally no one I know in the 30+ years I have been here collects rainwater on their roof. Whats your source, r/malta?
You forgot tourism which is their largest money maker.
Tourism is relatively big there but only relatively to the population numbers. I'd argue gambling contributes more to the GDP, while tourism only keeps the light on on the economy. Tourism allows the citizens to make money but it's a small country so it doesn't scale. Gambling scales globally.
I have no numbers to back this up.
But the internet does, and it is 12% for gambling, against 15-25% for tourism (whichever source you believe).
[1] https://timesofmalta.com/article/the-15-billion-question-is-...
[2] https://www.emcs.com.mt/emcs-tourism-malta-economy/