Download (28Mb) - LSE Theses Online

unified economy) of 1963, Cyprus is not that much better off. The peer group
derived benchmarks for 1980 (Figure 6.28 & Table 6.7) give 1% to 10% more
income to an idealised economy that experienced no civil war and was able to
resolve its political differences before the military intervention of two NATO
powers.
By 1990 the aggregate performance of the Cypriot economies outperform
expectations based on peer group averages by a considerable margin. The aggregate
Cypriot economy also outperformed all the peer economies individually throughout
the 1980s. Similarly, the individual performances of both Cypriot economies stand
up well to international comparisons in the 1980s. However, whilst rapid economic
growth may have benefited the Greek-Cypriot economy by feeding directly into
improvements in per capita income, in relative and absolute terms increases in
Turkish-Cypriot overall income did not contribute to the same kind of per capita
income improvements. Relative to the US, Turkish-Cypriot per capita income
stagnated, and relative to the (Greek Cypriot) Republic of Cyprus, Turkish-Cypriot
per capita income diverged significantly.
Clearly the effects of civil war and inter-communal re-distribution in Cyprus were
not evenly spread, despite the fact that benefits in terms of growth in per capita
GNP flowed in both directions at the different historical junctures, 1963 and 1974.
One community (by their own ready admission, the political losers) seemed to
benefit, or at least not lose out economically. Particularly by 1990, the Greek-
Cypriots seemed to have been able to buck the regional and structural growth trend,
having done considerably better than could have been expected in a unified
economy. Given their background, conditioning factors and performance indicators,
Greek-Cypriots seem to have been able to perform, on average, at least as well as
could have been expected, even by 1980, had they not lost an officially estimated
70% of "productive potential" in 1974 66 . The other community (in terms of de facto
66 Republic of Cyprus. 1995. Statistical Abstract 1993. Dept. of Statistics and Research, Min. of
Finance, p.5.
346