“Besides its strategic goal to exploit Cyprus’ natural gas reserves, the Cypriot Government focuses on fully exploiting medium-term prospects created by the increased interest of giant companies in oilfield services to set up their base in Cyprus,” Lakkotrypis told the annual general meeting of the Famagusta Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

“Already in some cases this interest has been turned into action and there will be more”, he noted.

Lakkotrypis saidthat exploration programmes are underway at present by all the companies that have been granted hydrocarbon exploration licences in blocks of Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone.

So far Cyprus has signed contracts with US Noble Energy on block 12, and French energy giant TOTAL on blocks 10 and 11. Italian heavyweights ENI and KOGAS were given concessions over blocks 2 and 3 and 9. Exploration activity in block 12 revealed estimated gross mean resources of 5 trillion cubic feet (tcf).

“Our goal is to start new drilling in the second half of 2014 by ENI/KOGAS and in 2015 by Noble Energy and TOTAL”, Lakkotrypis noted.

At the same time, he said, the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism is promoting and implementing measures to restore growth, improve liquidity in the economy, attract new investments and create new jobs, on the basis of a new economic model, based on research, innovation and entrepreneurship.

In particular, he noted that the Ministry is preparing funding programmes for the new period 2014-2020, seeking mainly to boost entrepreneurship, enhance the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises of the manufacturing sector, provide incentives to create business clusters and promote business innovation.

He also noted the establishment of the Cyprus Entrepreneurship Fund to enhance access to finance by SMEs with an amount of €100 million made available through financing from the European Investment Bank.

On tourism, Lakkotrypis noted that “despite this year being a difficult one, the statistics are encouraging” as tourist arrivals increased by 3.5% between January and May 2014, compared to the same period in 2013, and added that for the summer period hotel occupancy is very high.

The Cypriot economy has been hampered by recession since the third quarter of 2011. Excluded from international markets in May 2011, Cyprus requested and received a €10 billion financial assistance package from the Troika (EC, ECB, IMF).

The lenders have said that Cyprus’ economic adjustment programme remains on track and fiscal targets for the first quarter of 2014 were met with a considerable margin, reflecting better than projected revenue performance and prudent budget execution.

Source: Famagusta Gazette