ENGLISH EDITION

The 2020 draft budget plan tabled in Parliament by the Greek government is compatible with achieving the fiscal goal for a primary surplus, the Parliament's Budget Office said in a report on Friday. However, the report noted there were uncertainties related with the room to save operating spending, the efficiency of incentives for e-transactions and the height of the growth rate.

Speaking to shareholders at an extraordinary general assembly on Thursday, Lamda boss Odysseas Athanasiou presented the company's investment plan for the 10,000 apartments that will be built in the seaside complex. Prices for most of the apartments will sell for around 3,500 euros to 4,000 euros per square meter.

Corinth Pipeworks, a subsidiary of Cenergy Holdings, will construct the steel pipes for the Gas Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) that will plan, build and manage the natural gas pipeline, a project linking Komotini in northern Greece and Stara Zagora in Bulgaria, with projected connections to other pipelines such as the Trans Adriatic Pipeline and the natural gas grid of Greece.

Expectations are dropping among investors and real estate officials about the impact the government's recently announced incentives will have on the construction sector. Some in the business are even calling on the government to change the measures before they are voted on by lawmakers on the grounds that they will have little, or no impact, on building activity and are more trouble than they are worth.

The European Commission has found Greek plans aimed at supporting the reduction of non-performing loans of Greek banks to be free of any State aid. The Commission found that, under the asset protection scheme (known by the name of “Hercules”), the Greek State will be remunerated in line with market conditions for the risk it will assume by granting a guarantee on securitised non-performing loans.

The face of Piraeus Street, one of the busiest roads in Athens, is set to change. A series of property investments on the road, connecting the port of Piraeus with the city center, has been announced for the next two years from investors such as US Hines and Greece's Viohalco group, along with state bodies such as the Athens municipality.

Greece raised 1.5 billion euros from the reopening of a 10-year bond issue, with the yield of the bond set at an historic low of 1.5 pct. What is more important is the increased participation of institutional investors in the bookbuilding process that markedly limited the participation of hedge funds.

A number of fund managers believed recently that Greek banks had turned the corner and started building positions in the sector. But most of them now looking over their portfolios in disappointment, realizing that there is a massive gap between preparing a proposal that will improve the balance sheets of lenders and implementing it. What did go wrong.

The budget sees gross domestic product expanding by 2.8 percent in 2020, versus a previous forecast of 2.3 percent in the country's mid term plan. This year, however, Greece's growth forecast will miss the mark, with expansion seen at 2 percent, as opposed to the 2.3 percent target previously set.

Eurobank, Greece's third-largest lender, is holding talks exclusively with US fund manager Pimco on the sale of its Financial Planning Services (FPS) unit, sources tell Business Daily, ruling out negotiations with any other potential buyer. The deal relates to Eurobank's FPS unit, the lender's loan recovery business, and includes its Cairo portfolio of sour debt worth 7.4 billion euros.