In Brief
VAT receipts help budget revenues meet half-year growth target Ordinary budget revenues grew 6.1 percent year-on-year to 18.92 billion euros in the first half of this year, meeting the government’s annual growth target, the Finance Ministry announced yesterday. Value-added tax (VAT) receipts in the first half of the year were up 13.1 percent to 5.9 billion euros with income tax up 7.7 percent to 5.7 billion. Tax revenues on stock trading were down 49.4 percent to 48.5 million euros, the result of dwindling volumes on the Athens Stock Exchange. State revenues from car registrations fell 66.9 percent. A drop-off in budget revenues in the first four months of 2002 make this year’s budget surplus goal of 0.8 percent of gross domestic product hard to reach. (Reuters) Hellenic Petroleum unions decide five-day strike, legal action Employees at state-controlled Hellenic Petroleum yesterday decided to call a second five-day strike in protest at the planned sale of a 23.17-percent stake to a consortium composed of Lukoil, Russia’s top oil company, and the Latsis Group, owners of the Petrola refinery. The unions have also decided to sue the management for allegedly making moves that lost Hellenic Petroleum important clients and revenue. The exact date of the strike will be decided in accordance with the Thessaloniki and Elefsis labor centers. The unions have warned they will follow that action with a 10-day strike. Contract value up Ethniki Insurance announced yesterday a 14.5-percent increase in the value of new contracts signed during the first half of 2002 to 308.8 million euros. Life insurance contracts accounted for 119.5 million euros, a 13.4-percent rise from the same period last year. The value of fire insurance contracts rose 26 percent and that of general civil liability contracts, 73.7 percent, the company said. Promotion US investment bank Merrill Lynch announced yesterday it had appointed Yiannos Kontopoulos as its chief global foreign exchange strategist based in New York. Kontopoulos, previously responsible for currency strategy in Latin America with Merrill, will work closely with the firm’s global economics team to formulate the long-term outlook for major world currencies, it said. Before joining Merrill in 1997, Kontopoulos, who has a PhD in economics from Columbia University, worked as an economist for Salomon Brother’s Latin America division. Merrill Lynch has offices in 38 countries and total client assets of about $1.4 trillion. (Reuters) More clients Stet Hellas, one of Greece’s three mobile telephony services providers, announced yesterday that at the end of June it had 2,284,066 subscribers, a 21-percent year-on-year rise. Of these, 1,558,909 are prepaid subscribers and 725,157 contract subscribers. In the second quarter of 2002, new subscribers reached 85,650, a 35.8-percent rise from the same period in 2001. Stet Hellas trails CosmOTE and Panafon Vodaphone in market share.
