Cypriots appear to be more comfortable spending this Christmas with credit card expenditure up 16 per cent at the start of the holiday season compared with the same time last year, Bank of Cyprus said.

GDP growth rate in real terms, during the third quarter of 2018, is estimated at 3.7% over the corresponding quarter of 2017, according to data released on Friday by the Statistical Service of Cyprus.

A research done by the Economic Research Centre University of Cyprus highlights that economic sentiment improved in Cyprus in November; specifically, the economic sentiment indicator rose by 2.6% compared with the previous month, reaching 115.2 units.

Seasonally adjusted GDP rose by 0.2% in the euro area (EA19), by 0.3% in the EU28 and by 0.8% in Cyprus during the third quarter of 2018, compared with the previous quarter, according to an estimate published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Finance Minister Harris Georgiades urged parties to back structural reforms and consider them a national goal that will change the country and maintain economic growth.

Inflation was recorded at 2.7% in November 2018 which lessened in intensity compared to October of the same year.

The Ministry of Finance raised €17.9 million through the issuance of six-year bonds for natural persons, the Public Debt Management Office (PDMO) said in a press release recently.

Air traffic to and from Cyprus increased by 14.3% from 2016 to 2017, nearly double the EU average of 7.3%, a Eurostat report published recently showed.

The number of registered unemployed fell an annual 15.6% in November 2018, according to seasonally adjusted data released by the Statistical Service recently.

Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Israel are drafting an intergovernmental agreement on the EastMed pipeline with the aim of signing it in the first quarter of 2019, Greece’s Energy Minister Giorgos Stathakis said recently.