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After several attempts, failed starts, stalling and jump-starts, the one-stop-shop concept (you know, the one ministers promised us several years ago) is finally getting its lift-off from the Cyprus launch station. Or so, we hope…
Empty promises in the past have cost Cyprus millions in lost revenues, as simple procedures such as registering a company still takes eons to complete, despite some Baltic states doing it all in a day. At least we have cut delivery time from several months to a few days.
Foreign-owned companies still face difficulties to process some of the paperwork for their employees, with things improving there as well, although there is still a go-slow attitude at the Immigration offices.
Property registration and title deeds is still regarded as an anathema to potential buyers, who very often delegate the work to specialist services who employ retired civil servants with the patience to ensure the nerve wrecking visit from one office to the other.
Even some online services have improved, though the ones installed several years back, such as Social Insurance payments need to be updated and made more flexible.
A recent survey by PwC found that local CEOs are concerned about their human resources and are hesitant to invest more until Cyprus exits the current crisis. Another survey, however, this time by Baker Tilly, found that although business and government services were “satisfactory”, the quality of life factor still lagged the main reason for investors to move to Cyprus – taxation.
The one-stop-shop should have been implemented years ago, and when the Financial Mirror was critical of the slow pace of implementation of such a universal service, officials simply ignored the comments and continued with their heads in the sand. We hate to say it, but “we told you so!”
What makes the current administration so confident that it declared that the one-stop-shop will be a reality in the immediate future? Nothing seems to have changed in the government mechanism, so that leaves us with one conclusion – the human factor. It’s the same people who are manning the services today who did so several years ago. So, we can conclude that anything done today could have been done one, two or three years ago.
Let’s just hope that the latest attempt to start the one-stop-shop succeeds. There is no other choice.
