The Republic Of Cyprus gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, and later on, due to the outbreak of communal strife between the two main ethnic inhabiting communities, a separation between these group occurred. Currently, the Turkish Cypriot Community, located in the northern part of island, declared itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyrpus. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus has its own government and its constitution differs from the Republic of Cyprus one. Greek and Turkish are the official languages spoken in the country. In addition to these two, English and Russian are spoken by a significant share of the population.
Due to the country’s location and climate, the service sector, which includes trade and tourism, employs the vast majority of the workforce, contributing by roughly four-fifths to the economic output. Although it reported a negative GDP growth rate between 2012 and 2014, Cyprus' economy recovered quickly and was out of the red again by 2015. The most important export and import partner is Greece with a share of about 11 percent in all exports, and 25.7 percent in all imports.
