Cyprus Maritime Industry is one of its most fruitful sectors in the island. The islands pride itself in being one of the top centers for ship owning and management. At current stage there are over 130 ship companies in Cyprus. In fact, Cyprus is the largest crew management center globally and largest third-party ship agreement in Europe. Its ship register is the third largest in Europe and 11th globally. The industry accounts for more than 7% of the GDP. It has a business-friendly environment thanks to its high level of expertise, exceptional maritime infrastructure, the presence of high quality professional services such as accounting, legal and tax. For instance, it has increased the number of double taxation treaties with over 60 countries and has among the lowest corporation tax of about 12.5% in Europe.
The Cyprus flag ranks among the top on Tokyo and Paris MOUs and ranks at the top on other port state control agreement “whitelist” and hence among the highest quality EU flags. The Cyprus Shipping Chamber CSC lobbying and support efforts of the Merchant Shipping DMS are important factors in industry development. DMS is determined to modernize the operations of the shipping companies and make Cyprus a five-star flag. Some of the DMS efforts aimed at maintaining Cyprus as a key shipping hub include offering a 24/7 support services, reacting rapidly to emergencies, reinforcing its staff and using more sophisticated mobile and electronic communications.
Cyprus has an efficient framework with a low company setup and operation fees and a beneficial taxation system which is attractive to shipping companies. It introduced a tonnage tax in 2010 which is upgraded and approved by EU which ensure the competitiveness of the industry and enhances the reputation as a top ship services location. Cyprus controls 25% of the global third-party ship management activities and about 5% of the world fleet. A major benefit of Cyprus based shipping companies is the ease of sourcing highly educated personnel. Cyprus has also adapted a beneficial legislation framework that provides tax incentives to high earning expats. These move establishes Cyprus as a top destination for foreign shipping executives hence bringing more expertise in the sector. In conclusion, Cyprus shipping industry has a lot of positive development and has a key advantage of increasing tonnage quality and increasing the number of first high-rank shipping companies.
