Finance ministry against extending dual pricing

THE FINANCE Ministry is opposed to a proposal by deputies to extend the euro dual price period beyond September 30, a senior official said yesterday.

Dual pricing has been in effect since last September, and was supposed to last a year, as is recommended by the EU Commission.

However a proposal to extend it for another nine months, until the end of June 2009, was presented to the House Finance Committee on Monday by socialist EDEK deputy Marinos Sizopoulos.

He said Cypriots needed more time to adjust and to think in euros because many were still thinking in Cyprus pounds. The issue will be placed in front of parliament today.

“We expressed strong reservations [at the Finance Committee],” said Andreas Charalambous, the Director of Finance at the Ministry, who headed up the euro changeover.

“We feel people should adapt to the euro so there is no really big meaning in extending the dual pricing period,” he said.

“Even the European Commission doesn’t recommend it. It should be abolished so people will stop thinking in two currencies.”

Charalambous said it was not mandatory to follow the Commission’s guidelines on the issue but the recommendation was that people should be moving in the other direction..

He also said there would also be an additional cost for small businesses.

Charalambous said he had not heard of any other country where dual pricing had been extended.

“It just does harm and does no good,” he said.

Sizopoulos told the Finance Committee that the extension was necessary because a lot of older people and people in rural areas were having difficulty in comparing the prices of goods and services.

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