Business: Turkey gets an IMF board seat
18/07/2012
For the first time, Turkey receives an IMF board seat. German company signs green field investment with Macedonia, and Greece approves building of a gas pipeline from Bulgaria to the Mediterranean.
 Turkey is set to join the board of the International Monetary Fund. [Reuters] |
Turkey will get an IMF board seat for the first time, media reported on Thursday (July 12th) citing sources familiar with the matter. According to a statement by the Undersecretariat of the Treasury, the country will serve as deputy executive director of its group of countries in the executive board in 2012, before assuming the executive director seat in 2014.
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Greece's Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change approved on Monday (July 16th) the building of a gas pipeline connecting the town of Komotini with Stara Zagora in Bulgaria. The pipe will be 180 km and will be able to transport 3 billion cubic metres a year initially, with the eventual capacity reaching 5 billion cubic metres. It will ship gas from the Caspian, the Mediterranean, or from a liquefied natural gas terminal in Turkey.
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German company Lisa Draxlmaier GmbH and the Macedonian government signed an agreement on Monday (July 16th) on the biggest German green field investment in the Balkan country. The firm will build a plant for vehicle parts in Kavadarci with the total investment reaching 35m euros. The facility will create 4,000 jobs.
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Migrant remittances to Bulgaria have reached an all-time record in May, data from the central bank showed on Monday (July 16th). Despite the global financial crisis, Bulgarians working abroad sent to their families at home a total of 78.2m euros in May, which is a record amount since 2004, when the bank started collecting such data.
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Greece should follow the example of neighbouring Bulgaria and introduce a flat tax system, the authoritative Forbes advised in an article on Sunday (July 15th). "When Bulgaria did it, tax revenues actually rose 5.24% in the first year of flat-tax implementation, compared to the last year of the previous tax system. That is more of an increase in revenue than Greece's government has gotten from all of its tax-hiking 'austerity' attempts," the article pointed out.
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Serbia's Central Bank on Thursday (July 12th) raised the benchmark interest rate for a second month in a row by a quarter of a point to 10.25%. The decision to increase the rate, which was already second highest in Europe, was explained with price pressures, which outweighed concerns that the economy is slowing.
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The Bank of Cyprus on Thursday (July 12th) appointed Yiannis Kypri as its new chief executive after the resignation of Andreas Aliades two days earlier. Aliades cited "a lack of cohesion in dealing with challenges in the banking sector," as a reason for his stepping down. Kypri is a chartered accountant and has been working in the bank since 1980.
(Various Sources -- 12/7/12-18/7/12)
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