Some Rating Agencies forecasts on Cypriot economy will be disproved, FinMin says

Minister stressed also the need to “remain serious and committed “to the effort to restore trust and credibility to the Cypriot economy.

Speaking to the press fowling a meeting he had today at his office with the President of the Alliance Citizens George Lillikas, Georgiades said that “we still have great economic challenges that lie ahead of us and there’s still some way to go”, adding that everyone has a role to play in this effort.

Asked to comment on the negative forecasts on the Cypriot economy by Fitch, he said that “rating agencies do their job and we do ours” noting that the Cyprus economy was neither downgraded nor upgraded.

Minister noted that we must remain serious and committed to the effort towards the implementation of all those things that the rating agencies expect to see them being implemented so that we eventually regain everyone’s confidence and trust in the economy of Cyprus.

Asked if such forecasts could be refuted, the Minister expressed the belief that some Rating Agencies’ forecasts on the Cypriot economy would be refuted much earlier than expected.

“We respect their job and we remain committed to ours" he added.

Fitch ratings agency expects that Cyprus’ output will contract by around 5% in 2015 and 1.5% in 2016 and not return to growth until 2017.

It expects the recession to be deeper and the downturn to last longer than assumed under the EU/IMF programme, the basis of a bail out for Cyprus agreed in late March.

Excluded from the international markets, Cyprus applied for financial assistance to cover its fiscal needs and to rescue its two largest bank hit severely by deteriorating assets amid the financial crisis and by the Greek sovereign debt haircut.