THE TRADE Ministry announced yesterday that it was revamping its economic policies in an effort to attract more foreign investment.
Minister George Lillikas said the goal of these new investment initiatives was to establish Cyprus as the main investment centre in the Eastern Mediterranean, thereby making it the central actor in connecting the market of the roughly 450 million European consumers with that of the 300 plus million in the Middle East.
Cyprus’ strategic geographical location at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, EU membership, high level of services and quality of life, sunny climate, double tax treaties, foreign income tax credit, and its corporate uniform tax rate of 10 per cent, the lowest in the EU, are some of the advantages that the island offers to investors, according to a foreign investors’ guide that the Trade Minister puts out.
Lillikas told a news conference yesterday that the new investment initiatives would revolve around “three pillars”.
The first is the creation of a non-profit state-owned Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA), which would focus on accelerating investment procedures and creating a communications strategy to reach more potential foreign investors.
The second pillar involves establishing procedures and assigning new official positions to speed up the implementation of those investments deemed particularly important.
“In some cases investors are disappointed with the bureaucracy they must go through to secure necessary licences,” the ministry’s permanent secretary Christos Loizides told the Cyprus Mail yesterday. “For example, there are often delays in securing work permits for alien employees or construction permits.”
Loizides said the ministry would assess the investment projects at the Foreign Investors’ Service Centre and rate them based on various criteria that include the size of the investment, their potential to create jobs, the types of goods to be produced (high-tech products get priority), and the general benefits the investment would have on the economy.
“Once they’ve passed this examination and have been found to be promising investment projects then these applications will be passed on to employees in the various departments who will be appointed by the Council of Ministers for the specific purpose of speeding up this process,” Loizides said.
The third and final pillar is the 2006 Strategic Action Plan for Foreign Investors, which deals with marketing and promotion. The plan is designed to target investors in specific regions based on the potential value that the investments would offer the island.
The Trade Minister claimed that these incentives for foreign investment would benefit not only foreign investors but also the average Cypriot citizen because in the long term the investments would raise the island’s economic standards.
