In Brief
OPAP agents hold strike on the day of World Cup final Gaming group OPAP’s agents said late on Tuesday they will strike July 9, the day of the soccer World Cup final, in a bid to push for increased commissions and other demands. The agents’ union, which represents about 5,400 outlets in Greece, said in a statement it wants OPAP, one of Europe’s biggest betting companies, to increase their commission from its popular Kino lottery game. Agents also want OPAP to provide them with new terminals and guarantee to offer its lottery and sports betting game only through their outlets in the future. Analysts have forecast OPAP would have 350 million to 400 million euros in turnover from bets on its fixed odds Pame Stoichima game but said a strike on the final match would not have any substantial impact on the its annual revenues. CCHBC completes joint buyout of Italy’s Traficante firm Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Co (CCHBC) said yesterday its joint acquisition with The Coca-Cola Company of 100 percent of Italian water firm Traficante was complete. The deal, valued at 35 million euros, got regulatory approval on June 21. The Traficante acquisition includes two production facilities in southern Italy and the mineral water brands Lilia and Lilia Kiss. CCHBC is the world’s second-largest bottler of Coca-Cola products by sales and is 24 percent-owned by The Coca-Cola Co. (Reuters) Pensions The government does not intend to change current provisions for early retirement during its present term, Labor Minister Savvas Tsitouridis said yesterday. He added that it will introduce incentives to encourage people to remain at work. Next week, the government will activate the committee which is to take full stock of the social insurance problem, Tsitouridis said. Cyprus inflation Cyprus’s consumer inflation eased to 3.02 percent year on year in June from 3.13 percent in May, the statistics department said. For the January-June 2006 period the inflation tracker was running at 2.88 percent compared to the same months of 2005, the statistics department said. (Reuters) Turk gold Turkish gold imports plummeted 37.4 percent to 94.9 tons in the first half of the current year from the same period of 2005, the Istanbul Gold Exchange said on its website yesterday. Imports in June sank 52 percent to 11.1 tons in June from a year earlier, it said. (Reuters) Greek aluminium Greece supplies 80 percent of all aluminium in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), according to a market survey by the Economy and Trade Office of Greece in Skopje. Greek products are preferred to the cheaper Turkish ones. In the first half of the year, FYROM imported 933.3 tons of aluminium profiles, worth $3.5 million, and aluminium products, such as doors and windows, amounting to 150 tons and $915,700.
