Cyprus (2017 eInvoicing Country Sheet)

Legislation

The Digital Strategy for Cyprus, approved by the Council of Ministers of Cyprus on 8 February 2012, recommends the adoption of eInvoicing in the context of promoting the use of ICT to enable a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy and society.

The Department of Electronic Communications, with the guidance of the Advisory Committee for Information Society, developed the strategy for the period 2012 to 2020. This strategy is in line with the objectives and actions proposed by the Digital Agenda for Europe.

The government of Cyprus is currently preparing legislation to transpose the Directive 2014/55/EU and mandate the use of the European standard on eInvoicing. The Treasury Public Procurement Directorate is analysing the standard to propose the fields to be used by the central government.

eInvoicing platform and management solutions

The government of Cyprus is currently developing a centralised eInvoicing platform to process electronic invoices. This platform will serve as an ERP system operated in a hybrid model with the management of the Treasury Public Procurement Directorate and involvement of Boomertel as the service provider acting on behalf of public sector organisation. The project is co-funded by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme[1] (more information concerning the project in the ‘Additional information’ section below).

Approach for receiving and processing

Currently, economic operators submit eInvoices to the Treasury Public Procurement Directorate on a voluntary basis via the eInvoicing Access Point of ARIADNI, the Cyprus government gateway portal. The electronic invoices are processed manually (i.e. non-automated process). This process will be updated and performed in an automated manner once the centralised eInvoicing platform of the Cypriot government enters into operation.

Additional information

The Ministry of Finance is participating in a co-financed CEF project [1] (action code: 2015-CY-IA-0052) to develop a technical infrastructure enabling the exchange of eInvoices in the B2G context.

The main objective of this project is to facilitate the adoption of eInvoicing by enabling economic operators to submit electronic invoices to central government authorities. This will be achieved by adopting European and international standards and through the connection to the PEPPOL Access Point[2]. The timeline for the implementation of the project is from 1 October 2016 to 31 December 2017.

Public and private actors constitute the consortium:

• Public sector: the Ministry of Finance as coordinator, the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works (Department of Postal Services) and the Cyprus Organisation for Standardisation;
• Private sector: RTD TALOS Ltd, Deloitte Ltd and AC Goldman Solutions & Services Ltd.

The Ministry of Finance, the Treasury Public Procurement Directorate, the Tax Department and the Department of Information Technology Services are also involved in another CEF-funded project [3] to implement B2G eInvoicing at local authorities’ level.

This project has the following public and private sector partners:

• Public sector: the Ministry of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism, the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works (Department of Postal Services) and the Cyprus Organisation for Standardisation;

Private sector: RTD TALOS Ltd, Deloitte Ltd and AC Goldman Solutions & Services Ltd.

[1] The Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) is a key EU funding instrument that supports trans-European networks and infrastructures in the sectors of transport, telecommunications and energy.

[2] The Council of Ministers approved a decision to adopt PEPPOL on 15 February 2017.

[3] Action code: 2016-CY-IA-0105.

VALIDATED BY THE EMSFEI MEMBER

Last updated:  Nov 29, 2017 17:09