As the economy is recovering from the pandemic the government aims to maintain a low unemployment rate to safeguard the income of the citizens and proceed with promoting its other key policies such as setting a national minimum wage, Finance Minister Constantinos Petrides has said.
He was speaking to CNA on the occasion of Eurostat data, published on Wednesday, that showed that Cyprus in July 2021 marked the highest reduction in unemployment compared with the respective period of last year, while registering the lowest reading in unemployment since June 2009.
“The unemployment rate is a very important index as behind the numbers of unemployment are human beings,” Petrides said, adding that “for this reason the reduction of unemployment is very important and means that some of our fellow citizens found jobs in spite of the pandemic.”
Petrides also noted that “our aim while transitioning to economic recovery is to maintain unemployment at low levels so as to safeguard the income of our fellow citizens and to proceed with other policies such as setting a national minimum wage.”
Noting that some uncertainty remains due to Covid, the Finance Minister said the real impact on unemployment will be shown with the termination of public support measures which applies in all countries.”
“But we are convinced that given the current course of the economy, unemployment will remain at low levels”, he said without elaborating on the government’s target over the unemployment rate in 2021 due to the uncertainty associated with the Covid pandemic.
Source: Cyprus News Agency