NICOSIA (Reuters) – Cyprus remained stuck in recession in the third quarter, official data showed yesterday, bucking the trend of the broader eurozone, which showed growth after five quarters of decline. The Mediterranean island’s gross domestic product shrank 1.4 percent in the third quarter compared with the second, which registered a quarterly decline of 0.8 percent. It was the third quarterly back-to-back contraction for Cyprus, which lagged its eurozone peers in displaying signs of strain from the global economic crisis. Cyprus, which represents about 0.2 percent of the eurozone economy, is now feeling the pain from a slump in the construction sector and in tourism. “It is worse than we originally expected,” said Michalis Florentiades, head of economic research at Hellenic Bank.

SOFIA (Reuters) – Azerbaijan signed a deal yesterday to export gas to Bulgaria, which aims to reduce its almost total dependence on Russian gas. The two countries will also look at bringing compressed Azeri gas by tankers to Black Sea ports, Bulgarian Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov said after the signing ceremony. He said Bulgaria might receive 1 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas per year but did not give a time frame. A gas dispute between Russia and transit country Ukraine in January cut off supplies to Europe, leaving households without heating in the depths of winter and forcing factory to close.

Croatia’s Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor proposed Djuro Popijac, a member of the business community, as the European Union candidate’s new economy minister yesterday. Popijac, 50, is the head of the national employers’ association HUP, a key advocate of faster reforms needed to prepare the economy for market competition in the European Union, which Zagreb hopes to join in 2012. (Reuters)

Serbia’s central bank left interest rates unchanged yesterday but further eased rules to boost dinar liquidity and encourage banks to lend more to companies and retail clients. The bank last cut the two-week repo rate by a full percentage point to 10 percent on November 5, and last amended its reserve requirement rules a month ago. (Reuters)

Diana Shipping Inc said it received a $40 million, 10-year term loan from Bremer Landesbank to finance part of the cost of buying Capesize vessel M/V Houston. The company has already taken delivery of the vessel, which has been chartered to Shagang Shipping Co for a minimum of 59 months to a maximum of 62 months at a gross rate of $55,000 per day. (Reuters)

The Bulgarian economy fell into an even deeper recession in the third quarter and contracted an annual 5.8 percent, after shrinking 4.9 percent in the second quarter, the statistics office’s flash estimate showed yesterday. (Reuters)