Great Recession in Europe

Bulgaria's real GDP growth is expected to accelerate to 1.3% in 2016 from 1.0% this year, according to the European Commission's Spring 2015 Economic Forecast released on Tuesday.

The country is expected to swing to 1.0% inflation next year from 0.5% deflation in 2015. The unemployment rate is forecast to decrease to 10.4% in 2015 and 9.8% next year from 11.4% in 2014.

The European Union has nudged up its forecast for economic growth across the 19-country eurozone despite a much gloomier outlook for Greece.

Around half of investors expect Greece to leave the eurozone within the next 12 months, a survey by German research group Sentix showed on Tuesday.

Sentix's eurozone breakup index for Greece shot up to 48.3 percent in April from 35.5 percent in March, suggesting one in two investors is skeptical about pledges to keep Athens in the single currency bloc.

 In first three months gov?t tapped 40 pct more cash through repos than amount foreseen for entire year

By Sotiris Nikas & Prokopis Hatzinikolaou

Banks are expected to have an even smaller role in the financing of residential property transactions in the first half of the year, weighing on the already tough market conditions.

Greece's jobless rate rose slightly to 26.6 percent in the first three months of the year from 26.1 percent in the previous quarter, data from the country's statistics service showed on Thursday.

The Public Sector is now indebted by 2.4 billion euros more, according the General Secretariat of Public Expenditure, in its research on January and February of 2015 expenditures and balances.

The result is that -now- the total arrears by the end of February is up to 75.7 billion euros, compared to 73.252 billion which it was by the end of 2014.

Greek retail sales by volume fell 0.1 percent in January compared to the same month a year earlier, declining for the third month in a row against the backdrop of rising political tensions, statistics service ELSTAT said on Tuesday.

By Nikos Roussanoglou

Construction in Greece has suffered one of the biggest declines to have been recorded by any professional sector within just a few years, as business activity in the domain has dropped as much as 80 percent since 2008, a study by the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) showed on Monday.

Governments cannot rely solely on low inflation and easy monetary policy to consolidate recovery and boost employment even though growth prospects are improving in the world's largest economies, the Paris-based OECD said on March 18.