The government generated a fiscal deficit of €18.7 million in the second quarter of 2018 compared to a shortfall of €86.5m in the respective three-month period last year, the statistical service said recently.

Entrepreneurs struggling to service their loans have opted for debt to asset swaps which has left banks with significant property portfolios.

Paphos has again won a Gold Quality Award as a top sustainable coastal tourist destination for 2018.

Cyprus’ economy has come out of the 2013 “cardiac arrest” and posted four years of growth, Bank of Cyprus CEO John Patrick Hourican said in an interview with Bloomberg television recently, a statement echoed both by the Hellenic Bank CEO Ioannis Matsis and Finance Minister Harris Georgiades in similar interviews.

Three satellite casinos are expected to launch operations in December 2018 — one each in Nicosia, Larnaca and Paphos, while that in the free Famagusta area should be up and running before the summer of 2019, according to press reports.

Italy is committed to the implementation of the EastMed pipeline project, the country’s Ambassador to Cyprus, Andrea Cavallari, has told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA), underlining the importance of this project in terms of creating a new route for energy supply to Europe.

Cyprus is “determined and committed” to working with the UK government to forge even stronger ties with Britain given that EU-Brexit negotiations were entering a critical stage, President Nicos Anastasiades said recently.

Cyprus is among the four EU countries in which less than 10% of electricity consumed in 2016 came from renewable energy sources, a Eurostat report just released revealed.

Cypriot bond yields fell sharply after Standard and Poor’s rating agency upgraded the island’s sovereign bond to investment grade, more than six years after it had been downgraded into ‘junk’ territory.

Cyprus and Egypt are reportedly poised – perhaps even this week – to conclude an interstate gas export-import agreement.