Kazamias: crunch time for CY

Finance Minister Kikis Kazamias today said he would suggest the sale of the majority share package of national carrier Cyprus Airways at the next cabinet meeting. 

Speaking at the 34th annual hotel conference in Nicosia, Kazamias said that CY had reached “crunch time” after several years of being unable to achieve viability on its own. 

The minister clarified that the government, which is the majority shareholder in CY, would be willing to sell off over 51 per cent of

the company to investors in a last ditch attempt to keep the company afloat.

The government currently owns 69.57 per cent of the company, while the remaining 30.43 per cent is owned by private investors. 

In October last year it emerged that some sort of talks were taking place with potential investors but nothing else has been heard on the matter since.

The government last year gave CY a €20-million cash injection earmarked as compensation for damages incurred due to the Turkish ban on the airline using its airspace.

It followed agreement with staff on a rescue plan whose main provisions involved measures by the company to save €30 million and the workers contributing another €12 million – €7 million through pay cuts and the rest through shedding 140 jobs from a total of around 1,200.

Pilots say despite their best efforts and assistance provided to the management, the company is still in the red, risking ending up like state charter airline Eurocypria.

Eurocypria went bust late in 2010 – leaving around 300 people jobless – despite receiving €35 million from the state earlier in the year.

 

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.