Alternatives to devaluation

Sir,
It is a difficult to fault the reasoning of Ernest E. Conklin in last week’s Sunday Mail (‘Devaluation: the rest of the story’) and I am old enough to have laughed at Harold Wilson’s assertion that ‘the pound in your pocket is not devalued’ when he followed the devaluation path.

However, the Cyprus government has already used the tax amnesty, so what alternative does Mr Conklin suggest? One possible move would be to transfer our European Union membership to a sub-membership of France. We could then throw pound notes at various farming groups and hand several sackfuls to Cyprus Airways without bothering about the effect of the stability pact and its unpleasant constraints on our economy.

Maurice Sokel, Paphos

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.