COMMENT: 15 years and still growing…

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It’s been 15 years since the first edition of the Financial Mirror rolled off the presses, declaring in our first editorial that “a nation’s economy is more than its gross national product” and that “business is about people”.

Our front page on March 17, 1993 saw “Few surprises” in Chancellor Norman Lamont’s budget, US Ambassador Robert Lamb presented the US-Cyprus awards for commerce to NCR, IBM, Micromania and Splash Water, government spokesman Ioannis Cassoulides (remember him?) had quashed ‘sanction busting’ reports on Serbian offshores and ruled out government plans to devalue the Cyprus pound. Why should he? For the first time in three years the CYP dipped below the two-dollar barrier to 1,9560/1,9920. Kikis Lazarides announced Laiki’s 1992 net profits of CYP 8.7 mln and that four new European Popular branches would open in Greece. The Cyprus economy had just lost its spark due to tighter monetary conditions and poor exports. Tourist arrivals were expected to rise to 2mln and revenues to CYP 665 mln. Unemployment was at 1.8%.

Two pages were dedicated to the stock market with 38 stocks reporting a weekly turnover of CYP 284,108. BoC had just retreated to CYP 2.085, CPB to 2.305 and HB lost 2 cents to 2,765. The CLR index had dropped to 121.1 from a 1992 April high of 146 points.

Throughout these years the Financial Mirror has followed the Cyprus economy, riding the upwaves as well as downturns, most important of which were the 1999/2000 stock exchange boom and bust, EU accession in 2003 and euro adoption this year.

Technology, too, saw us abreast of others, constantly upgrading our newsgathering capability. Keeping with the trends we are now ready to launch the fourth generation of our website that will include more reports and updates throughout the day in English and Greek, while our new project under wraps for the past six months will include video as well. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet…

 

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