President Nikos Christodoulides said in New York on Sunday evening that he does not rule out significant developments towards restarting talks on the Cyprus problem, despite a sense, particularly in Cyprus, that there will be none.
He also said very significant announcements of new investments by American corporate giants would come in the near term. He was speaking at a meeting with officials and members of the Federation of Cypriot Organisations of America.
The week has been a packed one, with the Cyprus problem dominating the meetings, Christodoulides said. He will meet the group again in a wider circle on Friday evening, when they will also review the week.
US investment in Cyprus has risen significantly, with results particularly in technology, he said. He visited three states last year.
He said he will be back in the US at the end of November for a Financial Times conference on Cyprus in New York. Beyond New York, he will visit Ohio, Boston and Florida to meet companies interested in investing in Cyprus.
The government will also run a campaign in New York, for the first time, to bring Cypriot talent back to Cyprus, he said, adding that the brain gain campaign is producing results. “People used to leave Cyprus to come and work in the US. Today we want to bring people back to Cyprus,” he said.
Cyprus’s economy is in the A category for the first time since 2011, Christodoulides said, and Standard and Poor’s also upgraded it last Friday evening. He said it is growing in a period of two wars. Public debt has fallen to 48% of GDP, on a downward trend, from about 80% when his government took over, he said, adding that the government will cut it further and is running public surpluses. Unemployment is about 3.6-3.7%, with full employment since 2008, he said.
The Cabinet approved the 2027 budget last Wednesday, with the largest increase going to defence, he said. A well-performing economy lets the government invest more in defence, education and health, and it has raised social spending, he added. Migration was Cyprus’s biggest problem when he took office in 2023, but the country is now a model, with arrivals down by more than 90% and returns up by more than 85%, he said.
He said he recently received the new US Ambassador, the first political appointment to Cyprus, who has personal ties to the US President. The conversation and the ambassador’s early actions suggest scope for even closer relations, he said, and he will brief the diaspora so that he and they can align their moves.
Federation President Kyriakos Papastylianou, in welcoming him, said the evening’s topics would be the Cyprus problem, which particularly concerns the diaspora, Cyprus-US relations, and how the diaspora can help develop them further. Christodoulides then spoke with members of the diaspora and answered their questions.
