The cabinet of ministers this week approved a bill amending the income tax law so that the existing tax exemption for the amount of investment in an approved small-to-medium innovative enterprise is also extended to corporate investors.

The government said that the bill is part of the commitments of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which contains a section on research and innovation, aiming to provide tax incentives to attract investment in that field.

Furthermore, this bill completes the package of tax measures of the action plan to attract companies to operate or expand their activities in Cyprus, as approved by the Council of Ministers in October 2021.

The proposed framework has been formulated following a series of consultations and an approval decision taken by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition.

The tax advantage will be calculated as 30 per cent of the amount invested for equity investment by a legal entity in an approved small and medium innovative enterprise, provided that this deduction will not exceed 50 per cent of the taxable income of the legal entity and will not exceed the amount of €150,000 overall.

This bill will be submitted to the House of Representatives for further examination before it goes through a voting process.

Cyprus’ trade deficit reached €1.68 billion for the period January-March 2022, compared to €1.37 billion for the corresponding period of 2021, according to a report by the Cyprus Statistical Service (Cystat) released on Wednesday.

The total imports of goods from EU Member States and third countries for the period January-March 2022 amounted to €2.47 billion, compared to €1.93 billion for the same time during 2021, reflecting an increase of 28.4 per cent.

Total exports of goods to EU Member States and third countries for the same period stood at €792.6 million, a year-on-year increase of 41.8 per cent, with the same figure having stood at €559 million in 2021.

The European Union was the main source of supply of goods to Cyprus with a share of €1.57 billion in total imports.

Imports from other European countries reached €166.9 million in January-March 2022, while imports from the rest of the world stood at €738.6 million.

Exports to the European Union amounted to €222.4 million, while exports to other European countries reached €73.7 million during this time. Exports to the rest of the world reached €496.5 million.

The Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) ended Wednesday, June 22 with losses.

The general Cyprus Stock Market Index was at 69.22 points at 13:10 during the day, reflecting a drop of 0.63 per cent over the previous day of trading.

The FTSE / CySE 20 Index was at 41.47 points, which represents a decrease of 0.62 per cent.

The total value of transactions came up to €4,237.

In terms of the sub-indexes, the main and alternative indexes fell by 0.68 per cent and 0.16 per cent respectively.

The investment firm and hotel indexes remained stable.

The biggest investment interest was attracted by the Bank of Cyprus (-2.36 per cent), Hellenic Bank (no change), Keo (-1.56 per cent) and Philoktimatiki Public Ltd (-9.09 per cent).