ENGLISH EDITION

Citizens that will upgrade their residents will have a tax reduction up to 40 percent, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said on Sunday in an interview with SKAI. According to Petsas, «the government's main plan is to provide a reduction of taxes up to 4,000 euros to anyone who makes expenses of 10,000 euros to upgrade his property».

"There is no fiscal gap for 2020 and this will be shown in the draft budget to be submitted to Parliament on Monday," Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said in an interview with "Εleftheros Typos" newspaper on Sunday.

The US will offer clear and undisputable guarantees to support Greece regarding the Turkish aggressive stance in the eastern Mediterranean, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in joint statements with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias on Saturday.

The ACEO-ICAP general economic climate index rose to 186 points in the third quarter of 2019 from 171 points in the previous quarter, reflecting the continuation and strengthening of a positive climate that has prevailed after the general elections in July and expectations of a significant improvement of the business environment in the country.

After a week of travelling to Italy, Montenegro and the Republic of North Macedonia, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived on Friday evening at Athens International Airport, where he was welcomed by his Greek counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias. Pompeo is scheduled to meet with key Greek officials on Saturday before returning to the US on Sunday.

The Hellenic Parliament, in a plenary session on Thursday, ratified four concessions allowing the exploratory drilling and extraction of hydrocarbons in regions of the Ionian Sea and waters west of Crete.

Industrial group Mytilineos is cementing its leading position in Greece's energy market with a modern natural gas unit that will start operating in 2021 as it also moves to build on its position in environmentally friendly development. This strategy comes at a time where the Greek government is revising its strategy on green power, setting ambitious goals for the country's switch to renewable energy sources.

Greece's largest supermarket chain Sklavenitis showed a sharp rise in turnover in 2018 following the merger with rival Marinopoulos but data indicates that a return to profitability may be harder than first thought. Retail spending in Greece is recovering from a 37 percent drop between 2008 to 2016 but at a slow pace amidst sluggish economic growth.

Greece's Finance Minister Christos Staikouras is scheduled to meet on Thursday afternoon with the heads of the country's banks to discuss the Hercules bad loan plan in a bid to secure the highest participation from lenders and reduce the risk of fresh uncertainty hitting the sector. The meeting comes after a report from Business Daily showing that the technical details of the plan submitted by Greece to the European Commission have not been approved by the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM).

Greece's role in energy developments in the region and in the European Union is one of the topics to be discussed during US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's October 5 visit to Athens US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said while he stressed the need to break Russia's gas monopoly in the Balkans and emphasized Greece's constructive role in importing US Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) at Revithousa and exporting it to neighboring Bulgaria.