“Obviously the rate of unemployment is still much too high, this is obvious but the situation is recovering well,” Hoyer told reporters on Monday after meeting President Nicos Anastasiades in Nicosia.

The banker who is in Cyprus to sign €50m loan guarantee agreement with Hellenic Bank to finance small and medium-size enterprises and mid-capitalisation companies said that the European Union’s bank already exceeded its financing target for Cyprus by €30m raising it to €230m. “We will stay after the crisis and even continue and increase our business,” he said.

“It was a very good year and in addition to that for the so-called Juncker plan, investment plan for Europe in the last year we had the first big programme in Cyprus,” Hoyer said in reference to the European Fund for Strategic Investment named after the chairman of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker. “Cyprus is now one of the all 28 countries in which the Juncker plan is active. So, it was a very good opportunity to exchange views”.

Cyprus’s unemployment rate stood in January at 14.1%, which is the third highest in the EU, compared to 13.1% in January 2016, according the EU’s statistical office Eurostat. The economy is projected to have expanded 2.8% last year compared to 1.7% in 2015, helping the government generate a slight fiscal surplus.

Source: Cyprus Mail