ECONOMY

In Brief

Daewoo wins Attica Holdings contract Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co, the world’s third-largest shipyard, won a $200 million contract, a person familiar with the contract said. Daewoo Shipbuilding will deliver two vessels to Greece’s biggest ferry operator Attica Holdings SA by the first quarter of 2012, said the person who declined to be identified because the information has yet to be made public. The order is Daewoo Shipbuilding’s biggest since August last year. Contracts for new vessels have slumped since the third quarter as the credit crisis and global recession prompted shipowners to delay taking delivery of vessels or cancel orders. The World Trade Organization has forecast global trade may shrink the most since World War II this year. Attica on June 22 said it awarded an order to Daewoo Shipbuilding. It didn’t disclose financial details. (Bloomberg) Cyprus to freeze electricity tariff hike Cyprus will temporarily freeze a proposed 3 percent increase to electricity tariffs for private consumers that was due to take effect July 1, the state-controlled Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) said. The planned rise to power prices was due to cover the cost of a fine of around 10 million euros ($13.9 million) that the EAC had to pay for exceeding European Union carbon dioxide emission allowances. Government authorities will now consider annulling the tariff hike once the sustainability of the EAC can be ensured, the sole power producer in Cyprus said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Carbon permits are a cost of generating power from fossil fuels. (Bloomberg) Montenegro debt Montenegro will borrow 30 million euros from Austria’s Erste Bank, Finance Minister Igor Luksic said yesterday, but declined to disclose other details before the transaction was completed. Luksic also said that a loan deal with the International Monetary Fund remains an option for the Balkan state. «The Finance Ministry has finalized talks with Erste Bank on a 30-million-euro loan in budgetary support, and the government authorized the ministry yesterday to sign the deal,» Luksic told Reuters. (Reuters) Rates unchanged Serbia’s central bank held its key policy rate at 13.0 percent yesterday on worries about still strong price pressures, evidence of shrinking tax revenue and a lack of fiscal response to tame the gaping budget deficit. The bank’s brief statement only said that the decision was based on an analysis of current economic developments and that the next policy meeting would be held on July 6. The bank last cut its benchmark, two-week repo rate on June 8. But it cautioned at the time that budgetary and price pressures in the economy would limit the pace of future policy easing despite estimates that the economy would shrink by almost 6 percent in 2009. May consumer price inflation hit 9.1 percent year-on-year, following a monthly rise of 2.1 percent. (Reuters) Bulgarian bonds The Bulgarian government bought back $184.2 million and 17 million euros in global bonds in November and December last year to take advantage of favorable market conditions at the time, the Finance Ministry said yesterday. (Reuters)

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