The negative business climate of the previous months is being reversed in Greece. The monthly Economic Climate Index (ECI) of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), measuring industry expectations, rose from 90 points in March to 91.4 percent in April (base 100 for 1990). The reversal is attributed to an improvement in expectations in industry, construction, retailing and services. The exception was the consumer trust index that kept sliding for the sixth month in a row. In Europe the slowdown continued with the index at 98 points in April, while that in the eurozone fell to 96.5 from 97.5 points in March.

The Public Power Corporation (PPC) will look into a number of sites for four power generation plants to replace old facilities, it said in a stock market filing yesterday. The country’s dominant power company, which is 51 percent state-owned, received approval from the government in 2003 to build new plants to replace existing capacity and upgrade old units up to a total 1,600 megawatts in capacity. PPC said it was considering building two natural gas-fired plants, one in Aliveri, central Greece and the other in Megalopoli on the Peloponnese peninsula. It is also looking into three sites for a third natural gas-fired facility and is considering a lignite-fired facility in the west of the province of Macedonia in the north. The utility did not say when it would make a final decision on the sites. (Reuters)

Shareholders of Greek mobile operator TIM Hellas empowered the company’s board to make decisions on corporate bond issuance following an extraordinary assembly yesterday. The authorization does not include issuance of bonds convertible into shares and corporate paper that “assigns a right of assumption of a percentage of the company’s earnings,” the company said. For these types of corporate bonds clearance by the general assembly of shareholders will still be necessary. TIM Hellas is Greece’s third-largest mobile phone company. Telecom Italia’s mobile arm TIM agreed last month to sell its its 81 percent stake in TIM Hellas to private equity firms Apax Partners and Texas Pacific Group for 1.1 billion euros. (Reuters)

Turkish budget airline Onur Air, temporarily banned by several European countries on safety grounds, said yesterday Dutch and German officials who inspected its planes found no faults that would prevent them flying. The Netherlands and Germany temporarily withdrew landing rights from the airline last week, saying its planes were unsafe. The action left many tourists stranded in Turkey. France and Switzerland have also imposed a ban on the airline. The airline said it expected Germany, France and Switzerland to lift their bans within the coming days. It said flights to the Netherlands could possibly begin without waiting for the expiry of a one-month ban which the country has imposed. (Reuters)

The government has proposed an economist as the new chief executive for Greek water utility EYDAP after the resignation of Sifis Glyniadakis earlier this week, an EYDAP official said yesterday. “The Public Works Ministry is proposing Antonis Vartholomaios as chief executive and Constantinos Kostoulas as president of EYDAP,” the official told Reuters. Vartholomaios and Kostoulas, a civil engineer, are already members of the board. (Reuters)