By Anthony O. Miller
YOU DIDN’T need a bookmaker to tell you that the odds were stacked against Cyprus, and that it either had to act soon, or give up on tourism and refocus its economy on selling Halloumi by correspondence.
Thirteen countries in Europe, Asia and Africa ring the Mediterranean’s 969, 100 square miles of sea. Besides these, two of the sea’s 11 major islands – Cyprus and Malta – are sovereign states. Then there are the scores of Aegean and other islets.
These thousands of miles of coastline harbour some 1,400 marinas. And of these 1,400, Cyprus – an island with a 9,000-year maritime history – has two. Such numbers hardly put it on the world’s charts as a place to put in, relax, provision, and sail on.
Fighting a stacked deck, Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis steered a bill through Parliament to change this. And as marinas were on the cards, on Thursday he drew full House: Parliament passed his bill to give Cyprus six, perhaps seven, marinas, all run by private owners.
First, the House of Representatives repealed a legal bar to leasing to private individuals any part of the shoreline going into the sea for the purpose of building permanent facilities of any kind – such as marinas. Next, it withdrew its demand for the right to set the rates to be charged boaters using the marinas.
Rolandis fought hard for these two provisions, reminding deputies that Cyprus-EU accession talks represented the future, while House rate-setting for a private business was retrograde. He won.
“The law went through on Thursday… allowing the building of marinas, and setting private rates,” a satisfied Rolandis told the Sunday Mail.
“We have convinced the House it is a must for Cyprus to upgrade its tourism. Because the sea and the sand are there, of course – very valuable as assets, but the tourist of today is more sophisticated. And while the sea and the sun are sufficient for some tourists, they are not for others,” he said.
President Glafcos Clerides must still sign the bill into law, Rolandis said, “but that will happen. I saw the president on Friday, and he was very gratified as well.”
By April, he said, tenders should be out, “and hopefully we may have people working on the marinas by the second half of the year. This is my objective, at least. I hope by this coming summer we could be in business,” with some construction begun.
Zacharias Ioannides, director-general of the Cyprus Hoteliers’ Association, was also pleased at the House vote, as he had pledged his Association would take serious note of any needless delays in passing the legislation.
“It’s very good news,” Ioannides said on Friday, “and I hope the steps that need to follow are taken as expeditiously as possible… We have been pushing (for years) the necessity of building a network of marinas on the coastline of Cyprus.”
The sole shoal Rolandis must now navigate is House approval of the international tenders he plans to seek. “This is a 40 to 50 page document,” that the minister feels the government, not Parliament, ought to handle. But the House insisted on vetting every word.
To avoid argument, he agreed. “I had a feeling that if we started an argument about that, it might take another three or four years” for the House to pass the bill.
Rolandis said the tender-vetting would be smooth sailing, as he would advise the House at each step, “so that by the end of March, the beginning of April,” the House will pass the tenders, they can go out, and “hopefully” work can begin as early as June.
Ioannides pledged his Association would keep a close watch on the tender- vetting: “We hope the actual inviting of tenders proceeds immediately, without any unnecessary delay,” he said.
Rolandis’ plan calls for a total of 5,000 berths divided among six, perhaps seven, marinas. One in Paphos would take 1,200 boats. A Limassol marina would berth another 1,200 vessels.
The Larnaca marina, currently able to take only 300 boats, would be expanded to 1,200 slips, and privatised under the new law. The marina at the San Rafael Hotel in Limassol would probably remain at its current 300- berth capacity.
A 600-berth marina in Ayia Napa, and one with 300 slips in Protaras would round out the certain six, “and there is also a request for Polis, as well – this would be the seventh,” Rolandis said.
“Such a number of marinas will bring additional tourism, and tourism that we call ‘upgraded tourism’ – tourists that can pay more money than the average. Probably they may increase tourism by five or 10 per cent,” he added.
Tourism was already up 6.45 per cent last year, and Rolandis expects a similar increase in 1999, with numbers rising from 2,222,701 last year to 3 million in 2003.
Some are not so sanguine as Rolandis or Ioannides about the marina plan. George Perdikis, leader of the Green Party and prominent environmentalist, is one. He deplored what he said was the lack of any environmental impact studies before pushing to build 5,000 berths.
“The government is fascinated with the extra money they will get from marinas,” Perdikis said. “They assume that all the rich men of the world will come to Cyprus to go to these marinas.”
“Who said we need six more marinas? What studies were done? The issue should be studied and then put into practice,” he said.
Perdikis said if marina fees are market-set, then poorer Cypriots will have no affordable place to berth their small boats. Instead of building six marinas, he suggested one or two large ones, and smaller shelters along the coast for small boats and yachts.
His objections were shared by a senior government employee, who is an expert in the field, but who insisted on anonymity. The expert said privatising all Cyprus’ marinas would make it “the only country in the world without a single public marina.”
Already, he said, small boat owners were being driven out of fishing shelters. Without rivers, bays or coves suitable for mooring small boats, soon they will have no place to go, he said.
While he agrees “we do need marinas, very urgently,” he suggested the limit being 5,000 berths. After that, instead of building more berths, services should be upgraded – water, sewage, electrical hookups added – with corresponding rate rises.
Rolandis said there would be a provision for special rates for certain types of boats, notably racing yachts. But he said: “You do not have a publicly owned hotel to give cheap accommodation to poor people.
“The same applies to marinas,” he said. “The marinas address a more limited number of people – the more affluent part of the society. So this argument does not stand.”
