Last week it was claimed the Cyprus economy was going to shrink by about five percent, which opened the finance minster up to ridicule.
This week it has been revised to ten per cent, which is at best wishful thinking.
With loss of the Cyprus tourist sector, and anyone who thinks Cyprus is going to see any tourists before the end of the season is living in la la land, the economic downturn is going to be far greater than ten per cent.
The world is heading into economic meltdown far worse than the Great Depression, international trade already down by 30%.
To put the Cypriot figures in context, the UK economy is expected to shrink by anywhere between 13 per cent and 30 per cent depending on which model, the assumptions fed into the model. The Treasury has forecast April May June the economy may shrink by 30 per cent.
We can not go back to normal as normal was not normal, it was destroying the planet.
We have been able to hear birdsong, our streets traffic free, our cites pollution free, the skies free of planes. A world few of us will have seen in our lifetimes. In India they are able to see in the far distance the snow covered Himalayas, a sight last seen over thirty years ago,
We were told we could not cut carbon emissions within the timescale required for zero carbon 2035, it was impossible, impractical, and yet we gave achieved massive reductions overnight.
Politics is not a race, two or more corrupt political parties in race as to decide who gets the opportunity to do the bidding of oligarchs.
Politics is who does what to whom.
We have seen capitalism put into suspended animation. We are in a postcapitalist world, we have been since 2008. Who decides what the future will look look like once are through the coronavirus pandemic?
If we look to the UK, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has made billions of pounds available, to furlough workers with the government providing 80% of salary, a week later for the self employed, grants, soft loans to small businesses, all to keep businesses in hibernation, ready to be woken up.
In the covid-19 pandemic we are living in a another now. What we have to do is create our own another now, an alternative reality a vision of how we wish the world to b We failed in 2008, we cannot fail again in 2020, we cannot return t what was the norm, as the norm was not normal.
EU failed to deliver on eurbonds, offered loans that put the southern vassal states in debt bonadage with austerity to follow.
We have seen post-WWII relentless rise in GDP, or at least up to the 2008, but this rise is not normal, it has been at huge environmental cost, and the increase in GDP has not been fairly distributed, it has been shared with the rich.
We therefore have to devise a new economic system, one that sees the poor are not left behind, are not reliant on food banks, homeless are not living on our streets, whilst at the same time we do not exceed our planet limits and what we do produce is fair and equitable.
One such system is doughnut economics. How do we apply it to Cyprus, to the island, to municipalities, to sectors.
Look to Amsterdam, where the city is working with Kate Raworth to devise doughnut economics for the city, a 21st century economic system.
One of the largest sectors in Cyprus is tourism, it cannot be a return to mass tourism which not only is destroying the planet is destroying Cyprus, it brings in the dregs of the tourist industry , all-inclusive hotels with no benefit for the local economy.
Does Cyprus need an easyJet flight every day, sometimes two a day, would not two or three a week suffice, assuming easyJet is in business as will run out of money by August?
Exploration of a Doughnut economy for Cyprus to be expanded upon.
Tags: coronavirus, covid-19, Cyprus, Cyprus economy to shrink by ten percent, doughnut economics
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