Business

Deputy Prime Minister Daniela Bobeva has started negotiations with the international creditors of Bulgarian State Railways who have agreed to reschedule loans for 10 years.

The Holding's total liabilities currently amount to BGN 620M compared to BGN 704M in May, 2013, CEO Hristian Krastev told in an interview for Trud Daily.

Visa and MasterCard stopped processing transactions for holders of cards, issued by Russia's bank Rossiya, the bank said.

"The management of Rossiya understands the difficulties of clients in the current situation and will do all it can to solve them," the bank said in a statement.

Austria and Luxembourg have agreed to back EU plans to increase transparency in tax reporting at a summit in Brussels, Thursday.

The future of the South Stream pipeline is unclear and probably it will not be realized soon, said the head of the Italian company Eni, Paolo Scaroni. 

Eni is one of the key shareholders in the project and holds 20% of its shares. Eni is the largest Italian gas company and the main distributor of gas from Russia's Gazprom in Italy.  

A privatization procedure has been launched for the port in Limassol.

Cyprus' Cabinet approved the decision on Wednesday, following a decision of Parliament on March 4 in favor of a large-scale privatization program which has been strongly opposed by unions.

Standard & Poor's affirmed Greece's sovereign credit rating on Friday and gave it a stable outlook, saying it believed the country's economy was gradually rebalancing.

On Friday the Fitch rating agency lowered its outlook on the Russia economy to 'Negative' from 'Stable', citing the potential impact of the sanctions.

The agency confirmed Russia's “BBB” rating.

“The revision of the outlook to negative reflects the potential impact of sanctions on Russia’s economy and business environment,” Fitch said in a statement.

By Chryssa Liaggou

The London-based ITE Group announced on Thursday that it will stage the first international exhibition and conference on oil and natural gas in association with local exhibition firm ROTA SA in Athens on November 25-27 at the Metropolitan Expo venue next to the capital’s airport, with the aim of making it an annual event.

 National Bank reported net profits of 809 mln euros last year

By Evgenia Tzortzi and Yiannis Papadoyiannis

By Dimitra Manifava

They are new, innovative and experiencing rapid growth or the potential for it, which is particularly important in the context of the country’s prolonged recession: Greek start-up enterprises currently number 144, from just 16 in 2010, having created a total of 1,500 jobs in the innovation sector.