Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2005 1:28 amboulio wrote:the name of the game is not industry or manufacturing anymore it is services,and cyprus by joining the EU can and hopefully will become a hub of services such as banking,telecom,tech,tourist,shipping and many more for the EU towards the east and south.
You are right that services are vital in today world. However to compete in the services world being outside the EU can be a positive advantage. Banking for example - off shore banking that is free of EU regulations has attractions over banking that has the same regulations as nay EU bank (there are alos didadvantages). The point is with things like tourism and servcies generally you do not need 'level access' to the EU market. It's in manufacturing that 'trade protection' goes on primaliry. The EU has mountains of tarrifs on all sorts of manufactured goods that come from outside the EU - thus if you make these goods in significant numbers being in the Eu can make a lot of economic sense. Services (and espeically things like tourism) are not subject to these kinds of restrictions in the same ways. If you look at the trend in the EU of large companies 'outsourcing' phone help lines etc these are going to countries outside the EU - precisely because they are outside the EU. It makes no sense to outsource your call center operations from the UK to Germany. Outsourcing them from the UK to India does make finacial sense.
