Gold Magazine December 2013 - January 2014, Issue 33 | Page 16

LIMASSOL

cover story

second
to none

L

imassol, the secondlargest city in Cyprus, has
often been described as
“the dynamo of the Cyprus economy” and not
only by the local Chamber of Commerce and
Industry whose job it is to promote their
home base. It is generally accepted that
the country’s wine and spirits industry began in Limassol, where the first industrial
estate was later established; in the 1970s it
became home to what is now the island’s
extremely significant shipping sector, the
focus of the post-1974 tourism boom and,
later, the centre of the international business sector and related professional services. Today it hosts a large, thriving Russian
community, though, as Mayor Andreas
Christou pointed out in an interview with
Gold, it is not the largest group of foreign
nationals in the city: Britons still top that
particular list.
The Limassol in which Andreas Christou grew up was hugely different from
the place over which he currently presides
in his second five-year term as Mayor. In
fact, he was born only a few hundred metres from his office in City Hall.
“Everyone tends to idealise the past and
it may be that people used to have much
more communication with one another,
and the pursuit of material gain was a lot
less than it is now but the Limassol of my
youth was a poor city,” he recalls. “Lo-

cal government had very little funding.
Hundreds of young people were unable to
finish high school because they couldn’t
afford it. There is no doubt that things are
much better today. Of course, we must
protect our past and our heritage – I am
happy to note that we have around 700
listed buildings in Limassol and hundreds
of successful examples of such buildings
being given a new lease of life – but in
the end every generation must create its
own environment. Ancestor worship is
not what we are about! I feel very proud
of what we have accomplished and we are
always looking forward.”
Christou points to the pioneering work
done by the major law and accounting

16 Gold the international investment, finance & professional services magazine of cyprus

The importance
of the university
is comparable to that
of the port in terms
of its influence
on life in Limassol
firms in the late ‘60s, in conjunction with
the government of the country’s first president, Archbishop Makarios, to introduce
new legislation and draw up a tax system
enabling foreign companies to take advantage of a variety of business incentives,
including a low corporate tax rate (just
4.5% at the time). Such things first ca