In Brief
Dolphin prepares short list for pipeline DUBAI(Bloomberg) – Dolphin Energy Ltd has short-listed Saipem SpA of Italy, Consolidated Contractors International SAL of Greece and Stroytransgaz OAO of Russia to build a natural gas pipeline across the United Arab Emirates. Dolphin, a venture of the Abu Dhabi government’s investment arm Mubadala Development Co, Total SA and Occidental Petroleum Corp, will award the contract by August 1, the company said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Five international construction companies had submitted «priced tenders» for the project, Dolphin said, without giving further details. The pipeline is being built by Dolphin for the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority, and will be able to carry about 800 million cubic feet of gas a day eastward from Taweelah in Abu Dhabi to the Qidfa power and water plant in Fujairah in the UAE. Trade unions say measures favor rich ZAGREB(AFP) – Croatian trade unions are accusing the government of adopting measures that have only benefited the rich in response to an economic crisis resulting from soaring oil and food prices. After being stable at around 3 percent since 2004, Croatia’s inflation rate stood at 6.4 percent in May, according to the statistics bureau. This is expected to worsen in the coming months, with electricity costs due to be hiked 20 percent at the end of July, adding to strains caused by a similar rise in gasoline prices since the start of the year. «The increase in prices was expected, but its consequences are not the same in rich European countries and Croatia,» the head of one of the country’s biggest trade unions, Kresimir Sever, told AFP. «Average prices of goods and services in Croatia have reached some 80 percent that of average prices in the European Union, while the average salary is below 30 percent of the European one,» he noted. Croatian food prices have jumped by 7.5 percent in the past year led by cereal, dairy and poultry products, up some 10 percent, cooking oil, up by 18 percent and fruit by 17 percent. The government has reacted to the crisis, seen as the most serious to have hit the Croatian economy in the past decade, with a series of measures which unions label as «futile.» Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said recently his cabinet had allocated 250 million euros (390 million dollars) toward social measures. Fund launch Egypt’s investment bank Beltone Financial said yesterday it will launch a $150 million private equity fund in partnership with France’s Siparex to invest in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt and the Gulf. «The fund will invest in independent, unlisted, financially sound, and promising SMEs or potential spin-offs from large companies with growth and export potential,» Beltone said in a press release. Beltone Financial, which was established in 2002 has operations in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, London and New York. It says it has more than $6 billion of assets under management. A Beltone official declined to disclose how much the investment bank will contribute to the fund. Siparex is a leading French group investing in small and medium-sized companies. It operates in France, Italy, Spain and the United States. (Reuters)
