Filenews 21 March 2022 - by Dora Christodoulou
The sharp drop in their turnover over the last two years is not enough for them due to the deterioration of the economic situation due to the pandemic and the successive lockdowns, car dealers in Paphos have to face another problem. Many foreign permanent residents of Paphos are now outside Cyprus, either because they remained in their countries of origin with the implementation of restrictions due to the pandemic, or because, in the meantime, new conditions have been created by the changes in the state's programme for obtaining passports, mainly with regard to the Chinese, and the war in Ukraine, as far as Russian customers of the companies are concerned.
This peculiar situation was confirmed by the president of the Second-Hand Car Trading Association, Andreas Sikkis, speaking to "F", stressing that the entrepreneurs of the sector recorded during this period of measures to contain the pandemic, significant cancellations for vehicles whose businessmen paid their taxes normally, as if they made them available to the market, he stressed. Typical are the cases of traders who, he said, had ready-made deals with Russian and Chinese customers to buy luxury vehicles on the eve of the first lockdown. "These agreements did not have time to be completed", he stresses, "but the ugliest thing for us is that in our constant efforts to get in touch with them now, to see if they are still interested in these markets, we cannot even identify them or they are not in a position to tell us what they will do."
Andreas Sikkis estimated that the situation at this time is more difficult than the crisis of 2013, since now citizens, having suffered continuous unexpected negative developments in their finances in recent years, have now greatly downgraded the car market as a key priority.
