Economy

WASHINGTON - The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved on Friday a 27.7 mln euro loan to support Serbia in its effort to deepen and further develop its capital markets with a Catalysing Long Term Finance Through Capital Markets Project.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the new increase in the minimum wage, which will become 780 euros from April 1, ANA-MPA agency reported.

15.1% of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 do not study or work, according to the results of the NSI's monitoring of the labor force in Bulgaria in 2022.

One in ten between the ages of 18 and 24 has dropped out of the education system early, the data also show.

The relative share of persons with higher education from the population aged 25 - 34 is 33.8%.

BELGRADE - The Serbian dinar's official median exchange rate against the euro is 117.3113 dinars for one euro on Friday, which is a slight change from Thursday, the National Bank of Serbia said.

The dinar is steady against the euro m-o-m and up by 0.3 pct y-o-y.

The Greek government will raise the minimum wage next month, the third rise in more than a year, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday, months before its term ends.

Mitsotakis' conservative government, whose four-year term ends in July, raised the monthly gross minimum wage twice last year to 713 euros as households' incomes took a hit from persistently high inflation.

The Greek banking system is clearly in a much better position now to absorb any turbulence from international markets than it was four years ago, Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said on Thursday, commenting on global banking system tensions caused by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the crisis at Credit Suisse.

"The US banking system remains stable and Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be available when they are needed, thanks to the 'decisive and strong' action taken after Silicon Valley Bank's (SVB) failure to deal with the outflow of deposits at its end last week," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee, Reuters reported.

No one can claim they got bored watching Thursday's bourse session at Athinon Avenue, as after the 4.55% slump on Wednesday, the fastest in nine months, buyers returned in force on Thursday morning boosted by the central bank's support for Credit Suisse.

The draft election manifesto of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party marks a return to more orthodox, free market economic policies, four sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Turkey is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14 and opinion polls show that Erdogan will face his biggest electoral challenge yet in his two decades in power.

The European Central Bank today raised the key interest rate by 50 basis points to 3.5%, the highest level since 2008, and did not comment on what its future steps might be to control inflation.