THE CHAIRMAN of the House Finance Committee, DIKO’s Marcos Kyprianou, yesterday accused the government of having no policy for the economy and tourism.
Kyprianou claimed that the government’s financial policy had failed, and said economic indicators were there to prove the point.
He said several indicators, which were currently just within the EU’s Maastricht criteria, could at any moment fall out because of the government’s policy mistakes.
Kyprianou said growth rates had dropped from 9.4 per cent in 1992 to two per cent in 2002, while unemployment had gone up to 3.5 per cent from 1.8 per cent in 1992.
The number of unemployed had risen from 5,187 in 1992 to 11,020 10 years later, Kyprianou said.
According to the opposition deputy, the public debt hit the £6.4 billion mark last year, while in 1992 it stood at just £2.7 billion.
The per capita share of public debt in 1992 was £3,250, while it currently stands at £10,250, with the government forking over £1 million in interest every day, Kyprianou said.
The DIKO deputy said many people in Cyprus lived below the poverty line and urged the government to talk to the ordinary people who had problems making ends meet, instead of hiding behind statistics.
Concerning tourism, Kyprianou accused the government of having no plans to tackle the imminent crisis due to the looming war in Iraq, as well as industry’s inability to face global recession problems.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
