FinMin: Cyprus economy recovering

[Dominic]

Read the article and chat about it below...

[Jimgward]

I think a tiny economy like Cyprus can easily expect rapid growth, when equally they've experienced rapid decline.... their economy is largely dependent on tourism and with the middle-east and now turkey becoming undesirable for tourists, that is and will continue to do well for the foreseeable... add in potential gas revenues and they should continue to grow.

[Dominic]

Indeed, and Turkey's relationship with Russia has been a boost to Cyprus too.

[KTG]

One major blight on any recovery is the Non-Performing Loans ratio. Cyprus leads the world on this with 47%, even Greece can only manage 37% and the EU average is 5%. It's hard to believe banks could have been so profligate or is it!

[kingfisher]

KTG- quite so. And it is not only the NPL ratio but the unaddressed causes of the massive debt- which has changed little- and shows no real signs of changing.
Admittedly off-topic, but UK's 2.5% NPL ratio is lowest in a major European economy. Another good reason for getting disentangled ASAP....
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/e ... 400_EN.pdf