Giving the first budget report under the Dimitris Christofias government, Republic of Cyprus Finance Minister Charilaos Stavrakis has managed to avoid tax rise, and has stated that his the budget changes for 2009 will help Cyprus stay in its position as one of the few nations left in Europe to be floating above the current recession gloom.

After the global downturn and the current recession, many feared that Cyprus, which has seen a number of political, social and economic reforms in the past eight years, would see all that work undone and fall foul of the economic crisis that is sweeping the globe.

Though revenue is to be reigned in to account for the lack of prosperity in the world at large, Charilaos Stavrakis has committed to keeping spending up, and that the reforms that have sounded Cyprus out in recent years will continue under Christofias, the first Leninist-Marxist leader to hold a place in the E.U

So what reforms have been seen in Cyprus in the last decade?

First, the tourist and property investment markets have boomed. This is due to a number of factors, but one is the Annan Plan Referendum in 2004, in which a closely run reunification attempt by the E.U and the U.N showed the rest of the world that Cyprus had made real progress since the invasion of Turkey and subsequent partitioning of the island in 1974.

In that case, Greek Cypriots, urged largely by President of the time Tassos Papadopoulos, rejected the bill. But the introduction of the potentially reunited island to the world's media drove up property prices and encouraged holidaymakers, leaving the island in a prime position for a property investment boom.

And it got exactly that. Property prices in Cyprus have doubled four times in the decade, so that prices, which began at £9000 an acre in 2000, and now around £90,000 an acre.

This particular sector - the overseas investment sector - has created wealth and prosperity for the Cypriot economy, and it is in part due to property in Cyprus that the current economic status is one of the more promising in Europe, and has managed to stay consistent where big nations like France Britain and Germany have languished.

So the news from Charilaos Stavrakis will allay the fears of cynics who might predict that the Cyprus bubble would burst, and it shows just how the North Cyprus property boom is here to stay.And it is good news, too, for Christofias who has been talking regularly with North Cyprus counterpart Mehmet Ali Talat on the partition issue which both hope to solve during the current presidential terms.

Many believe that the true key to the social and economic reforms - the unique state of Cyprus properties - is to solve the Cyprus reunification issue, and a sound economy will speed up that process; Christofias and Talat can concentrate on the issue, and do not have to worry so much about the economic effect of the recession.

In essence, then, Overseas Investment in Cyprus looks safe. The new financial report, plus the unique state of Cyprus property and the continued advancement of Cyprus reunification issues should make Overseas Investment out as secure on the island.