Cyprus plans to lift a ban on casinos and offer firms tax exemptions on profits reinvested on the island under a package of reforms to kickstart its ailing economy, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said on Monday.
The country’s EU partners agreed on a 10 billion euro (US$12.8 billion US$12.8 billion) rescue package on Monday last week after tense negotiations showed that the currency union’s crisis is far from over.
The tough terms of the deal look set to deepen the island’s recession, shrink its banking sector and lead to thousands of job losses, while the capital controls to prevent a run on Cypriot banks may test the ties that bind the euro bloc together.
Photo: Reuters
Anastasiades, who briefed ministers on the economy at an informal meeting on Monday, said the 12-point growth plan would be put to the Cypriot Cabinet for approval within the next 15 days.
The program includes measures to attract foreign investment to the island — a hub for offshore finance — as well as tax exemptions on business profits reinvested there, and the easing of payment terms and interest rates on loans.
In a bid to attract more tourists to the south of the island, Nicosia also hopes to lift a ban on casinos, which only operate legally in Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus.
Cyprus’ bailout is the first to impose losses on depositors. Those with more than 100,000 euros in Bank of Cyprus accounts are to lose about 60 percent of their savings.
Asked to predict the depth of the recession, Cypriot government spokesman Christos Stylianides said: “It’s not possible at this time to put numbers on the recession.”
“The government, having inherited an atomic bomb, tried to deactivate it and in doing so spared this country from total bankruptcy. It is now dealing with a post-earthquake period with the aim to kickstart the economy,” he added.
FIVE NEW FABS: An acquisition of Siltronic would boost GlobalWafers’ market share from 17 to 30 percent, easily surpassing Japanese rival Sumco’s 25 percent GlobalWafers Inc (環球晶圓) yesterday said it is in final talks to acquire Germany-based Siltronic AG in a 3.75 billion euro (US$4.5 billion) deal, which might help it compete with its closest rival Sumco Corp of Japan. The acquisition would be the fifth for GlobalWafers since 2008, as it has grown to become the world’s No. 3 supplier of silicon wafers through such deals. GlobalWafers, which has a 17 percent market share, would see its market position greatly elevated to 30 percent when combined with Siltronic’s 13 percent, according to a presentation Siltronic gave to its investors at a quarterly conference in August. Sumco
With the speed cryptocurrency is emerging as the millennial generation’s alternative asset of choice in India, it is hard to imagine that just two years ago a couple of blockchain pioneers were briefly in police custody. Sathvik Vishwanath and Harish BV, cofounders of a then five-year-old start-up, were arrested in late 2018. No, they had not pulled off a shady initial coin offering. Their “crime” was that they put up a kiosk in a mall in Bangalore where customers could swap bitcoin, ether or ripple for cash or vice versa. That was the whole point of unocoin, their crypto token exchange.
CONCERNS: The bank would act if it noticed currency speculation, the governor said, but he did not comment on a likely trajectory of the NT dollar against the greenback The central bank would intervene in the market whenever necessary to help stabilize the New Taiwan dollar, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday, adding that it is concerned Taiwan might be placed on the US watchlist for currency manipulation. The Control Yuan recently sent letter inquiring about the central bank’s market regulation efforts, Yang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee on the NT dollar’s appreciation and property price hikes. “It is the central bank’s top responsibility to stabilize foreign exchanges,” he said. The central bank has often stepped in toward the end of trading sessions to moderate the NT
Qualcomm Inc expects global shipments of 5G smartphones to more than double to between 450 million and 550 million units next year from this year, driven by increasing 5G network deployment worldwide and broader adoption of 5G technology beyond smartphones, a company executive told a virtual news conference yesterday. The San Diego-based company said that more than five times more telecoms have commercially launched 5G services in the first 18 months of the 5G era, compared with wireless technology transitions to previous generations. The momentum is to pick up speed in 2022, with the shipment volume of 5G-ready smartphones projected to reach
RSS