Economy

The European Central Bank raised interest rates by 50 basis points on Thursday as promised, ignoring financial market chaos and calls by investors to dial back policy tightening at least until sentiment stabilizes.

An armored car guard was robbed at gunpoint on Wednesday morning while he was loading cash in an ATM located at the entrance of a supermarket in the district of Sepolia, central Athens.

The three suspects confronted the guard, removed the cash boxes and fled with an undisclosed amount, police said. The incident took place shortly after 11 a.m.

"Changing the leva-euro exchange rate is impossible". This is stated by the Bulgarian National Bank to National radio, after yesterday information was spread, which is claimed to be from a report of the Ministry of Finance, according to which there is a risk of a change in the exchange rate of the leva against the euro.

"There is no risk of bankruptcy of the state, nor of the intervention of the International Monetary Fund and the need to take out new debt." This was stated on the National Television by the Acting Minister of Finance Rositsa Velkova. Her comment was on the occasion of the two scenarios of the long-term budget forecast leaked to the media yesterday.

House sales to foreigners in Türkiye decreased by 27.0 percent in February compared to the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) announced on March 15.

A total of 3,350 houses were sold to foreigners last month, accounting for 4.2 percent of the country's total house sales of 80,031.

BELGRADE - Serbian Deputy PM and Finance Minister Sinisa Mali and EBRD regional director Matteo Colangeli signed agreements on a 300 mln dollar loan for the Serbian power generation sector on Wednesday.

The agreements were signed by Miroslav Tomasevic, director of the national power company EPS, and Grzegorz Zielinski, head of Energy Europe at EBRD.

In February, annual inflation in Bulgaria slowed down to a 9-month low of 16.0% compared to 16.7% in January, according to the data of the National Statistical Institute. This is the lowest annual inflation rate since May 2022.

On a monthly basis, however, there was an increase in consumer prices by 0.8% compared to the first month of 2023, when inflation rose by 1.4%.

The turmoil in the US banking sector following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) should have only a limited impact on European banks, which are organized differently, said ratings agencies Moody's and S&P Global on Tuesday, AFP reported.

The City of Light is losing its luster with tons of garbage piling up on Paris sidewalks as sanitation workers were on strike for a ninth day Tuesday. The creeping squalor is the most visible sign of widespread anger over a bill to raise the French retirement age by two years.

Piraeus Securities topped the list of the most active securities firms on the Athens Stock Exchange in February, with a market share of 21.94% of transactions.

It was followed by Eurobank Securities with a market share of 17.52%, Euroxx (14.61%), National Securities (8.86%) and Alpha Finance (5.77%).