In Brief
Bulgargas wants share in Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline SOFIA (SeeNews) – Bulgarian state-owned gas company Bulgargas plans to take part in a project to build an oil pipeline from the Black Sea port of Burgas to Alexandropoulis in Greece, the Bulgarian Economy Ministry said yesterday. «Bulgargas officially expressed its intention to take part in the designing and construction of the pipeline,» the ministry said on its website. Last April, Bulgaria, Russia and Greece gave the political go-ahead to the project for building the $700 million, nearly 300-kilometer pipeline. Apart from Bulgargas, Russian gas giant Gazprom, through its subsidiary Sibneft, BP’s Russian joint venture TNK-BP, Russian Stroytransgaz, Sovcomflot, and Tatneft, and Chevron, have also expressed interest to take part in the project. Government officials from Russia, Bulgaria and Greece will meet at the end of April in Athens, the ministry said. Correlation between level of education and income confirmed The high degree of correlation between an individual’s level of education and his or her income has long been taken for granted. So, the results of the National Statistics Service (NSS)’s survey of family budgets in 2004-05 come as no surprise, showing that a much higher proportion of poor people are illiterate than the better-off. Specifically, they show that 87.7 percent of poor people are classified as having low or no education – those having attended school only a few years and who did not finish elementary school or had not completed the minimum compulsory nine years of schooling. In contrast, only 47.3 percent of the non-poor had not completed the minimum. Among high school leavers, the non-poor are three times as numerous as the poor, while among college graduates and postgraduate degree holders the better-off are 7.7 and 24 times as many as the poor respectively. The survey also shows that 54.2 percent of those who have not attended school at all are threatened by poverty, against only 4.2 percent of college graduates. CCHBC Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company plans to sell a three-year, euro-denominated senior floating rate note (FRN), the banks managing the sale said yesterday. A banker familiar with the deal said it was likely to total 350 million euros and be priced to yield in the «low 20s» basis points over three-month Euribor. The deal will probably conclude today, the banker added. Citigroup and Deutsche Bank said the deal would be sold via Coca-Cola HBC Finance plc. (Reuters) Car recalls Nissan dealer Theoharakis announced yesterday the recall of three models – Nissan D40, Pathfinder R51 and X-trail T 130 – set to take place by May due to problems with the steering and fuel systems. Additionally, Renault said it will recall 3,940 Scenic models sold in Greece due to problems with the seat belts.
