Construction group J&P Avax and its partner Ioannou & Paraskevaidis Overseas Ltd signed a 325-million-euro real estate project in Qatar, it said yesterday. The consortium, in which J&P Avax holds a 25 percent stake, will build villas and design a part of The Pearl - Qatar, a multibillion-dollar offshore real estate project in energy-rich Qatar, the Greek contractor said. The Pearl will be a manmade island, 400 hectares in area, 350 meters off the coast of Qatar and about 20 kilometers north of the capital, Doha. The project should be completed in 36 months, J&P Avax said. (Reuters)

The General Secretariat for Consumers hotline (tel 1520) received 14.77 percent more calls last year than the year before, as more and more consumers call with complaints about services and products, as well as with various questions, Deputy Development Minister Yiannis Papathanassiou said yesterday. The number of calls in 2006 came to 38,272, against 33,345 the year before. The rise is attributed to increasing public awareness of the telephone line, as ever more consumers actually see their cases dealt with. Four in every seven (58 percent) complaints were put right, 23 percent were forwarded to the competent authorities for solution, 6.2 percent remain under investigation and 12.8 percent provided insufficient information. The service sector generates the most complaints, 17,390 in 2006, while complaints on goods came to 13,738.

Telecom systems developer Intracom Telecom, a unit of Russia’s Sitronics and Greece’s Intracom, said yesterday it won a $2.8 million ISDN contract for Costa Rica’s telecom provider. Intracom Telecom will provide ISDN Network Termination units to ICE and RACSA telecoms companies, the only fixed-line, mobile and Internet providers in Costa Rica. (Reuters)

Cyprus’s tourism revenues rose 2.2 percent in 2006 to 1.027 billion Cyprus pounds (1.81 billion euros) from an estimated 2.4 million holidaymakers, the statistics department said yesterday. Figures for December alone showed Russians were the big spenders, shelling out 87.1 Cyprus pounds on average daily for a 10-day holiday. They were followed by Israelis, who spent 79 pounds daily but on shorter breaks of less than three days. (Reuters)

Growth in Greece’s manufacturing sector picked up in January to a three-month high, driven by increased volumes and sales abroad, a monthly survey of around 300 companies showed. The seasonally adjusted Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rebounded to 51.8 points in January, its highest since October, from 49.9 in December, data from NTC Research showed. (Reuters)

Turkish exports rose 34 percent year-on-year to $6.6 billion in January, the Turkish Exporters’ Association said yesterday. (Reuters)