Minister of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance Zeta Emilianidou announced Thursday new measures to support businesses, employees and the unemployed, following the imposition of new restrictive measures by Cyprus Government to curb the spread of COVID-19 disease.

The European Commission announced today that it has approved “the modification of the two operational programmes (OP) for Cyprus, which will release more than €57 million to help address the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the country`s economy and health system”.

Cyprus’ pandemic-struck economy is expected to contract by 6.2% GDP in 2020, rebound 3.7% in 2021 and 3% the year after, said the European Commission autumn economic forecast.

Cyprus' Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy is looking towards a two-speed plan, separating the aim for digital transformation into small high-speed and longer-orientated projects, in order to ensure effectiveness, Deputy Minister Kyriacos Kokkinos said on Thursday.

The Global Innovation Index (GII) is an annual report which details and ranks the innovation performance among 131 countries and economies. It is divided into 2 main pillars: (a) the Innovation Input Sub-Index, which includes institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication and business sophistication; and (b) Innovation Output Sub-Index, which includes knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs.

Ninety percent of oil and gas executives agree that investments in technology and workforce are essential to surviving current market conditions, according to a new EY survey: Oil and Gas Digital Transformation and the Workforce Survey 2020. In fact, 58% of respondents said the COVID-19 pandemic has made investing in digital technology more urgent, with a majority planning to invest a great deal (29%) or moderate amount (51%) relative to their total budget.

The Shipping Chamber welcomes the results of the newest “Shipmanagement Report”, recently published by the Statistics Department of the Central Bank of Cyprus, for the first half of 2020, which covers the period 1 January – 30 June. 

In a bid to modernise the public education system and assist a transition to the digital age the government will install an e-government system for schools and has issued a tender for the project, education minister Prodromos Prodromou has announced.

Cyprus registered unemployed spiked 90% in October to 31,487 from 16,5444 in 2019, as the pandemic takes its toll on the labour market with hospitality and services taking the heaviest blow.

In a national address on Wednesday night, the Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said the government was obliged to take tough decisions for stricter measures as the island was no exception to Europe’s second coronavirus wave, before the health minister stepped in to outline the new measures that come into effect on Thursday.