A clear political message to the business community, that the state has become faster and the responsibility for the supply of affordable housing now passes to the market.

The perennial alibi of state bureaucracy and delays in issuing permits seems to be definitively removed by the Government from the construction sector. Speaking last night at the official dinner of the Cyprus Land and Building Developers Association in Limassol, the Minister of Interior, Constantinos Ioannou, representing the President of the Republic, sent a clear political message to the business community, that the state has become faster and the responsibility for the supply of affordable housing now passes to the market.

The Minister did not go there to make promises, but to present evidence. When you tell businessmen that within a few months, express permits were issued for 3,000 houses within 40 days and for 1,000 apartment buildings in 80 days, you essentially deprive them of the permanent complaint that the state has been hearing for decades, namely that they want to build and the Town Planning Department is blocking them.

The government is showing with numbers that it has started putting into practice its own share of the work, which was to speed up procedures and reduce paperwork through digitalization.

With property prices and rents having reached crazy levels, the housing problem is perhaps the biggest social thorn at this moment in Cyprus. Young people and young couples find it difficult to find a home. Mr. Ioannou characterized the construction sector as a partner of the state, but behind the polite phrasing hides a clear message. The state delivers the permits in hand in record time to increase supply in the market, and now it is the turn of the businessmen to lower prices by building affordable housing.

The state is casting off its responsibility for the shortage of houses and is cornering the private sector. If permits are now issued lightning-fast, but the market continues to produce only overpriced, unaffordable projects, then the problem will no longer lie with the government machinery, but with the developers themselves.

The reform and the facelift in the Town Planning and Land Registry departments are moving forward, a fact that constitutes good news for the economy. The success of this venture will not be judged by how fast the computers of the state services work. It will be judged by whether ordinary people will finally manage to find a decent and cheap home to live in.

Source: Brief