By Dmitrii Gartung, CEO, start-up entrepreneur & investor
“Cyprus is a tech island”, – everyone said. I thought so, too, back in 2021, when I first found my technical start-up GERDY in the sphere of robotics. 3 years later I am moving my businesses from Limassol to Dubai. Below are my reasons for that decision.
Banking system
This is painful in Cyprus. Some easy things like paying bills may take hours and hours of your time per month. Since almost nothing is digitalized, you have no ability to pay your bills automatically through your online bank or, for example, at the web page of your telecommunications services provider. So, you end up paying every single bill all by your own hands. This is very time consuming, especially if you are a real start-up entrepreneur with no big team or an accountant. Not to mention – completely inefficient.
Compliance
It is not a secret that Cyprus used to be an offshore tax haven in the past. Nowadays, compliance has become much stricter in Cyprus and even way too strict sometimes. Do not misunderstand me – I am all for compliance, but I strongly believe that it should not kill the transparent business. In the UAE, you undergo the compliance check just once and afterwards you are free to operate at least for some period of time. In Cyprus you have to prove to the regulator that you are a fair player all the time. And sometimes the requests are quite absurd. For example, to provide justification for a transaction worth a little sum like 100 EUR.
Human resources
For a technological company like mine, people and their knowledge are key. Sometimes you have to bring people for your business from abroad. In a situation like this, migration policy is crucial. In the UAE all the procedures are clear and simple. Upon providing all the necessary documents you will receive the ID for your employee within 3-5 business days. While in Cyprus the same process will take you up to 6 months and will most likely require the help of a professional migration consultant.
Cost of living
The UAE and Dubai, in particular, have a reputation of an expensive location. To some extent this is true, but I have a slightly uncommon view on that. See, in the UAE you pay no taxes at all. And even if you do pay a 9% corporate tax, this is still a very low taxation rate compared to most jurisdictions. In Cyprus or elsewhere in Europe you can get some free or relatively not expensive social services of good quality in return for the high taxation, e.g. healthcare, kindergarten, primary school or even a top-class university. The undergraduate degree programs in Cyprus vary from a range of approximately 3,000 EUR to 13,000 EUR, while in the UAE it is around 20,000 EUR. Yes, this is expensive. But this is your personal choice and your sphere of influence. And in the end you feel more satisfied with your expenditures, because you know what you have spent on.
Infrastructure
Last but not least – infrastructure. And by infrastructure I mean social infrastructure, as well as infrastructure for the business. How many entertainment activities are there in Dubai? Well, it is really hard to calculate, because it starts with the best-in-class beaches, restaurants, clubs, concert halls & theatre and ends with ice skiing and ice skating, which is a crazy thing to have in the middle of a desert.
For the business in my area the Dubai government has launched the Dubai Robotics and Automation Program and established Dubai Future Foundation with the goal of excel in Robotics and AI. Overall there are numerous programs both commercial and governmental in UAE that includes robotics. How many funds/accelerators/programs are there in Cyprus? Sadly, none. And that is the whole point.
Also published on Medium.
