ENGLISH EDITION

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.

Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment and Hard Rock International have submitted bids to build and operate a casino at Greece's Hellinikon complex as progress on the urban development picks up. Each of the bids from the two casinos is seen involving investments of more than a billion euros with a scheduled completion time of two to three years from when construction of the seaside complex starts.

Significant progress was made in a meeting held Thursday between Greece's Finance Minister Christos Staikouras and top bank officials on the Hercules plan, a proposal to help the country's lenders reduce 75 billion euros of bad loans festering on their balance sheets.

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.

The Chamber presented the results of a survey conducted by the Research Institute for Tourism (ITEP) in the period September 24-27 on hotels cooperating with Thomas Cook. The survey showed from a total of 9,917 hotels operating in the country, 1,193 were cooperating with Thomas Cook Group, or 12 pct of hotel capacity, with 48 pct of them ranking in the 1-, 2- and 3-star hotel categories.

Investments in student accommodation are set to increase in Greece in coming years in areas where supply falls short of demand, such as the cities of Patras and Heraklion (Crete).