Economy

Greece has topped the European Union chart in activating investments in the context of the European Fund for Strategic Investments, dubbed the Juncker Plan, in proportion to its gross domestic product, according to data presented by the European Commission on Tuesday.

Freelance professionals and all personal enterprises in general are the biggest winners of the new tax bill. As of 2020 they will enjoy a reduction in their tax bills amounting to or in some cases even exceeding 1,300 euros each, thanks to the slashing of the basic tax rate from 22 to 9 percent.

More than 310,000 pension applications to the main pension fund (EFKA) and the auxiliary pension fund (ETEAEP) remain pending, while the total number of outstanding cases regarding pension issues adds up to over 1 million, Labor Minister Yiannis Vroutsis said on Tuesday.

The Greek bourse benchmark is steadily approaching the 900-point mark after its advance on Tuesday on considerably increased turnover, mainly thanks to the further decline of Greek bond yields ahead of anticipated credit rating upgrades.

For the first time in history, there are more Chinese than Americans in the 10 percent of the world's richest people This is according to a study by the Credit Suisse, cited by BGNES. In order for a person to enter this ranking, he must have a personal savings of at least $ 109,430.

Expectations are growing that credit rating upgrades will be speeded up in the next few weeks, following the European Commission's approval of the Hercules plan to reduce bad loans, the government's pro-business reforms and the improvement of the Greek debt's profile following the strong bond rally.

Stocks in Athens resisted pressures and continued their upward trajectory on Monday, with banks getting the credit for grabbing investors' attention and leading the benchmark higher, although turnover remained below the 50-million-euro mark. Traders appear to be pricing in a likely Greek credit rating upgrade this Friday by Standard & Poor's.

From July 1, 2020, pensions will increase by 6.7 percent, according to the draft budget of the State Social Security for 2020.

Expenditures for pensions will be with BGN 729 million more than the allocated for this year. The pension ceiling is not expected to increase and remains at BGN 1,200.

As trash started to pile up on city streets over the weekend amid reactions from sanitation workers to plans privatize some garbage collections, the municipal authorities of Athens and Thessaloniki appealed to residents on Monday not to take out their trash on Tuesday and Wednesday at least.

The number of deposit holders with at least one million Turkish Liras (around $172,000) and more in their bank accounts increased by 29,928 compared to the end of 2018 to reach a total of 210,054 people as of end-August, Anadolu Agency has calculated based on data from the country's banking regulator BDDK.