Cyprus meets OECD tax standards

Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis announced that Cyprus has been included in the list of countries which meet international standards, set out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
''In the midst of a global financial crisis, countries are seeking to attract foreign investments and deposits and apply various means to achieve this goal,” Stavrakis said, as he announced Cyprus’ inclusion in the list of countries which implement the OECD internationally agreed tax standards.
He said this was achieved as a result of the Ministry's precautionary move to table to the House of Representatives a bill for the partial lifting of the banking confidentiality which the House has approved. The move came ahead of the G20 Summit which, on the insistence of mainly Germany and France, decided to ''take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions against tax havens.''
''We had predicted in time that this stance against countries with banking confidentiality of some sort will be very strong,'' Stavrakis said, adding that ''in the past few years Cyprus has developed in a very satisfactory way and unavoidably won a share of the market from other countries which compete against us.''
''We have won a very important battle, but the war is not yet over. We hear that other countries are trying one way or another to tarnish Cyprus' reputation as a sound financial centre of high standards and it is our job to make all those moves to maintain our position as high as possible,'' he noted.
Cyprus, he added, will wage this war having the lowest tax regime in Europe and an array of double taxation treaties with other countries.
''This combination and additionally our sound financial situation is what has placed us on the map of countries which attract foreign investments,'' he said, adding that ''we say clearly that Cyprus is not a tax haven, it just has very a low tax regime which is the same for permanent residents and non permanent residents,'' he explained.
He also said that Cyprus has successfully attracted Russian investments and deposits, as well as Russian firms registered in Cyprus, noting that this is something which perhaps worried other countries, competing with us, and which may be trying to cause problems for us.