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Whilst this argument may seem excessively pedantic, if the effect of government
spending in providing refugee housing was cruciai to the recovery, that claim may
be less powerful if a recovery was already in place. Following the implementation
of the Emergency Action Plan 1975-76, the Planning Bureau estimated that public
housing schemes had managed to accommodate 9,500 displaced families, though
7,500 of them had been re-housed in vacated and "repaired" Turkish-Cypriot
properties. Only 2,000 families had been provided with new public housing.
Given that the number of displaced families is about 50,000... it could be
said that the situation still remains very difficult, even though a number of
these families succeeded in the meantime in making other more satisfactory
housing arrangements. 43
Perhaps the best that can be said of the government's housing programme during the
crucial period of the implementation of the [first] Emergency Action Plan 44 , was
that it helped to alleviate human suffering and a societal breakdown. This means the
actions of the state still conformed to classical rather than Keynesian precepts. The
implication is that the market and not planning or intervention, was the route of
recovery. Some government incentives were directed toward the manufacturing
sector though these tended to take effect after the period of most rapid relative
growth had already taken place. The best that could be said is that public policies
helped to sustain and expand a recovery that was already well underway. The extent
to which public investment in the construction industry stimulated recovery, as
Zetter suggests, is still unproven. Essentially, increased government intervention in
the economy of Cyprus after 1974 seems politically inspired, and was politically,
rather than economically, successful (on both sides of the UN Buffer Zone).
43 Republic of Cyprus. Second Emergencv Economie Action Plan 1977-1978. Nicosia: Planning
Bureau, p. 153.
44 Republic of Cyprus. 1975. First Emergencv Action Plan 1975-76. Nicosia: Planning Bureau.
247