Money

By Prokopis Hatzinikolaou

The stronger U.S. dollar has stemmed external pressures in some countries from signs of weaker currencies and falling foreign exchange reserves.

In a report published on March 23, Moody?s Investor Service said external pressures in some countries are translating to capital outflows or significantly lower inflows as the U.S. dollar hurts countries with large external funding needs.

Turkish lender Kuveyt Türk said on March 22 it would launch Germany?s first full-fledged Islamic bank in July, a first step intended at offering sharia-compliant retail banking services across the continent.

BELGRADE - The National Bank of Serbia's (NBS) recent decision to reduce the reference interest rate from 8 to 7.5 percent created the conditions needed to further lower the interest rates on dinar loans, head of the NBS Council of Governors Nebojsa Savic said on Sunday.

The disclosure of leaked HSBC documents revealing how the Swiss branch of the banking multinational facilitated some of its wealthy clients, including several Greek citizens, to conceal millions in assets, caused global uproar last month.

The international credit rating agency, Fitch, has affirmed Turkey's long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings at BBB- and BBB, respectively with a stable outlook.

By Evgenia Tzortzi

Lotteries with rewards for receipts collection by taxpayers, which could even include cash prizes, as well as free drinks and tickets to events and museums for tourists visiting Greece are among the incentives proposed by the General Secretariat for Public Revenues to combat tax evasion by promoting the use of electronic transactions.

Bulgaria has sold a EUR 3.1 B triple-tranche bond comprising of seven-, 12- and 20-year maturities on foreign markets, the Finance Ministry said on Friday.

The volume is the biggest amount of debt issued by a country in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) through a single syndicate of banks, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

Under the motto "Stop the Bad Reforms in Education", high school pupils in Macedonia marched from the city park in Skopje to the front of the Education Ministry in the city centre, demanding that that government scrap graduation exams.

The National Union Bloc (BNS) chairman Dumitru Costin told AGERPRES on Thursday that the current proposal of modification of the Tax Code puts big pressure on the incomes from wages and discourages work.

Photo credit: (c) Angelo BREZOIANU / AGERPRES ARCHIVE