“Yes, we can” says Cyprus president

President Nicos Anastasiades said that “with hard and collective work, we can turn the crisis into an opportunity, by daring today what we haven’t dared in the past.”
Speaking at the KEVE Chamber of Commerce annual export awards ceremony on Wednesday, the president said “it seems that Cyprus is on the road of a new economic miracle, something that does not escape the attention and appreciation of both our international creditors and the international press.”
Anastasiades said that the course of recovery for the economy has seen its first positive results. “Just eight months after the tough decisions of last year and after three years of continuous rating downgrades, in November we had the first upgrading of our economy from an international ratings service. At the same time, just like the first two evaluations from our international creditors, the recent third evaluation is positive and encouraging.”
He added that after the last evaluation by the Troika of international lenders, the updated Memorandum for this year foresees that the core deficit will be significantly lower at 277 mln euros or 1.8% of GDP in relation to 483 mln euros or 3% of the GDP in the previous forecast.
The president said that after months of negative comments, the German financial press is now obliged to refer to the recovery of the Cyprus economy as well as the effort with structural changes and reforms with praise.
Anastasiades said that the foreign press now speaks about a country which is on a course of unprecedented successful and coordinated effort since the beginning, in order to face the economic crisis, and clarifies that while in the beginning it was foreseen that the recession would touch or surpass 8.7%, in the end, due to the corrective and timely moves on our part, it was limited to 5.3%.
The president added that “with the aim to provide motives to businesses for the facilitation and reinforcement of business activity, but also to generally mitigate the effects of the economic crisis, the government announced measures for development, ensuring that they will not have a large financial impact. We can now provide the necessary tools for our businesses to be able to survive, but to also take advantage of opportunities.”
He said that there were various economic sectors in which Cyprus shows comparative advantages like tourism, offshore activities, exports and transit trade. “Our vision is for our country to regain its reliability abroad and mainly to become an important base for economic and business activities in the wider area.”