The Finance Ministry has found gaping differences in the corresponding totals of transaction sums declared respectively by suppliers and clients for 2004. According to officials, significant divergences were found on about 270,000 declarations, totaling about -5 billion, approximately the same as for 2003. Nevertheless, inspectors are looking into the possibility of accounting errors and will check all firms and self-employed professionals concerned. Initial crosschecks have also revealed the extensive use of bogus receipts, which are sold by rackets. These included fictitious tax registration numbers. Separately, speaking in Parliament, Finance Minister Giorgos Alogoskoufis said tax evasion is a blatantly antisocial behavior, and reiterated the government's intention to reduce the taxpayers' burden.

Cyprus's central bank approved the merger of Cyprus Laiki Group with Greece's Marfin Financial Group and Egnatia Bank, the Cypriot lender said yesterday. The regulator approved the purchase of 100 percent of Marfin and Egnatia shares by the Cypriot bank, Laiki said in a stock market filing. The deal is worth about $3.1 billion. Greece has already approved the deal. In an all-share offer, Laiki is offering a total of 465.4 million new shares, valued at 3 Cyprus pounds each, to shareholders of the other two banks. Laiki is offering 5.7570 own shares per Marfin share and 1.2090 shares per Egnatia share. Marfin has said the new group will have equity of about -3.3 billion euros, ranking it the second largest in both Greece and Cyprus, and a market capitalization of about -4.2 billion. (Reuters)

The Greek holiday cruise industry can attract as many as 5 million visitors but the development of destinations requires proper attention at all levels, from oceangoing ships to small yachts, said Yiannis Evangelou, the head of the Hellenic Association of Tourism and Travel Agencies (HATTA). Speaking at the recent «70 Golden Greek Cruising Destinations» event in the context of the International Tourism Salon Athens 2006, he estimated that the number of the country's cruise destinations could rise as high as 70, through a process of select moves and with the cooperation of local authorities, the state and entrepreneurs. The event also heard that in 2006 there were 140 cruise ships in the Mediterranean, to which another 43 will be added next year.

Cotton is having a bad year in Greece, as the 2006 crop will be down by 35-40 percent, according to producers and deliveries to ginning houses, owing to bad weather at harvest, particularly last October, and the new system of subsidizing producers according to the new EU common agricultural policy rules. «This drop will definitely impact on producers' income, ginning houses, the textile sector and national economy,» the president of the Hellenic Fabrics group, Christos Akkas, told Kathimerini. Cotton is the main source of income for over 150,000 Greek families.