An EU Commission official believes civil servants in Cyprus are handsomely paid and enjoy more job security compared to their fellows colleagues in other member states.
Manfred Bergmann, head if the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) said that salaries in the public sector are higher than in other Member States, where civil servants receive lower wages in return for their job security.
“In Cyprus they have both high wages and protection, sounds like having the cake and eating it.”
Bergmann was talking to members of the House’s Finance and Labour committees on Tuesday in a discussion on the Commission’s report on Cyprus for 2019, published in February.
He said high salaries in the public sector may account for the lack of skilled labour in the private sector one reason might be this and another reason might be the education system.
"There is a need for cooperation between the private sector and education," he said.
Bergmann also referred to the privatization process, noting that "if you do not want to privatize the areas where there is a monopoly, such as telecommunications or energy, then you need a plan B so as to secure good results and efficient telecommunication, transport or energy sectors".
He warned that Cyprus has the “major disadvantage” of having a small and open economy, which makes it vulnerable to risks as it is based on vulnerable sectors such as tourism, construction and the “Citizenship for Investment scheme”.
Acknowledging that the Cypriot economy has been growing in recent years, he noted that risks continue to exist as the country’s finances continue to depend on macroeconomic balances, explaining that Cyprus has a large external and private debt, and high percentage of non-performing loans.
Commenting on the way the demise of the Co-op Bank was handled, Bergmann said that the government could have opted for other solutions, but the end result “does not appear to be a bad one”.
“It is not really a solution…the only thing that happened is that what was non-performing in the banking sector is now non-performing in the public sector via the special entity we have created for this”.
