Financial Mirror 2013 07 10

FinancialMirror The free-trade charade

12 steps to find a job

FinancialMirror

years Issue No. 1040

July 10 - 16 , 2013

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

By Theodore Panayotou, CIIM

PAGE 7

PAGE 4

How much did Mari cost?

Analysts see real cost at €1.5-3 bln EAC repairs damage for €165 mln SEE PAGE 3

Britain battles to build ‘Tech City’ as home grown talent goes West PAGE 22

PAGE 19

€1.00

July 10 - 16, 2013

2 | NEWS | financialmirror.com

IMF cuts global growth forecast

l Growth of 3.1% this year, 3.8% in 2014; Slowdown in emerging economies, recession in Europe weigh The International Monetary Fund trimmed its global growth forecast on Tuesday for the fifth time since early last year due to a slowdown in emerging economies and the woes in recession-struck Europe. In its mid-year health check of the world economy, the Washington-based lender also warned global growth could slow further if the pull-back from massive monetary stimulus in the United States triggers reversals in capital flows and crimps growth in developing countries.

The IMF shaved its 2013 forecast for global growth to 3.1%, as fast as the economy expanded last year and below the Fund’s 3.3% projection in April. It also lowered its forecast for 2014 to 3.8% after earlier predicting a 4% expansion.

The Fund has trimmed its growth forecast for 2013 in every major report since April 2012 after initially projecting the global economy would expand by as much as 4.1% this year, a sign of the unexpectedly bumpy recovery from the global financial crisis.

In an update of its World Economic Outlook report, the IMF said it underestimated the depth of the recession in Europe, and had not expected the United States to go ahead with growth-stunting spending cuts.

Emerging markets, which had previously been the engine of the global recovery, added to the overall subdued picture in the latest outlook, entitled “Growing Pains.” The IMF cut its 2013 growth forecast for developing countries to 5%, including a lower forecast for China, Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa,

often called the BRICS. The Fund said China’s slowdown was a particularly big risk, as the world’s second-largest economy navigates a shift to consumption-led growth. Any slowdown could hit commodity exporters, as China is one of the world’s biggest energy consumers.

“After years of strong growth, the BRICS are beginning to run into speed bumps,” said Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist. And while growth in emerging countries has slowed, inflation has not fallen with it, suggesting the economies are already growing close to their potential, he said.

“This has an important implication: that growth in emerging markets will remain high, but maybe substantially lower than it was before the crisis.”

A top Goldman Sachs strategist last week said investors are set to pay a hefty price for betting too much on the developing world, where countries from China to Brazil are dealing with tamped-down growth expectations and the chance of social unrest. “Risks of a longer growth slowdown in emerging market economies have now increased due to protracted effects of domestic capacity constraints, slowing credit growth, and weak external conditions,” the IMF said.

The Fund said it also assumed recent volatility in financial markets was a temporary reaction to lower growth in emerging countries and uncertainty about when the U.S. Federal Reserve would start to pull back from its bond-buying program.

“But one cannot rule out further acts of nerves along the way,” Blanchard said.

The IMF predicted the euro area would remain in recession this year, with the currency bloc’s economy contracting 0.6%, before recovering slightly to expand just under 1% next year.

In its annual health check of the euro zone economy on Monday, the IMF said the region must take coordinated action to revive economic growth.

The IMF also trimmed its forecasts for U.S. growth this year to 1.7%, a more pessimistic outlook than what the White House predicted on Monday, due to continued pain from deep government spending cuts.

However, it raised its forecast for Japan. It now expects Japan’s economy to grow 2% this year on the back of its monetary stimulus, which boosted confidence and private demand. It previously predicted Japan would grow 1.6% this year. But the Fund said Japan’s new economic strategy, known as “Abenomics,” also poses risks for the world, as investors could lose confidence if Japan does not implement structural reforms.

The IMF also increased its projection for growth in Britain to 0.9% this year from its previous prediction of 0.7%, welcome news for British finance minister George Osborne who clashed earlier this year with the Fund over its suggestion that it was time for him to ease up on austerity.

The Fund said it still remained concerned about Britain’s weak recovery.

Merkel’s rocky road to third term

l SPD still traumatised by “grand coalition”; Policy concessions may be needed to hold power

ANALYSIS The German election is still more than two months away but for many the vote’s final chapter has already been written.

Angela Merkel, it is widely assumed, is cruising to a third victory at the polls. When she wins, the thinking goes, there will be few, if any, major changes to German policy.

The vote could well play out according to script. Merkel’s conservatives hold a dominant 16-19 point lead over the next strongest party, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), and recent polls suggest she may be able to renew her centreright coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP) after September 22.

But should she fail to secure a parliamentary majority with the FDP, the election aftermath is likely to be far messier than many casual observers of German politics presume.

In this scenario, Merkel would probably have to pay a very heavy price in terms of policy concessions to stay in the Chancellery. And her exit could not be ruled out. In a note this week, J.P. Morgan analyst Alex White put the chance

Merkel will be booted out of office after the election at 20%.

“If the election result produces neither a centre-left or centre-right majority, which seems very likely, then we will witness the most difficult, protracted and dramatic coalition negotiations in the history of the Federal Republic,” Heribert Prantl wrote in an editorial in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily. “The winner takes it all? That may work for Abba but not in German politics,” he wrote. “The chancellor will not necessarily be the one that comes out on top.”

Under the German political system, leaders must secure a majority in the Bundestag lower house of parliament to rule.

Merkel’s conservatives may be far ahead of the SPD in opinion polls, but they are unlikely to win more than 40% of the vote on election day, meaning she will have to find a partner to stay in power.

If she can’t do that with the FDP, which may not reach the 5% threshhold to enter the Bundestag, the likelihood is that she turns to the SPD, with whom she ruled in her first term between 2005 and 2009.

HAUNTED The problem this time around is that the SPD is dead-set on avoiding a “grand coalition” under Merkel. That’s because the party is still haunted by their previous partnership, when Merkel co-opted many of her rival’s policy ideas, coaxed away its supporters and left the SPD with its worst election result in the post-war era four years ago.

Senior members of the party are vowing to prevent a repeat in September — even if it leads to months of postelection uncertainty.

“Anyone who believes the SPD is going to jump right back into a grand coalition doesn’t know the mood in the party nor the power of the states,” said a leading figure in the SPD. After a string of regional victories in recent years, the SPD now governs in 13 of Germany’s 16 states. The party’s regional barons are particularly worried about another “grand coalition” and are exerting huge pressure on the SPD leadership to explore other options after the vote.

“There are a lot of people in our party that would prefer to see Merkel partner with the Greens than do another grand coalition,” the SPD leader said.

Despite the reluctance, Frank Decker, a political scientist at Bonn University, believes the SPD will not be able to avoid partnering with Merkel if she fails to get her preferred centreright majority. That’s because all other coalition combinations seem far-fetched.

POUND OF FLESH With her decision to pull out of nuclear power after the

Fukushima disaster in Japan, Merkel removed the biggest hurdle to a partnership with the environmentalist Greens, a combination that has been tried at state but never at the federal level.

But the cultural divide and policy gap between the parties, particularly on economic issues, are seen as too big to overcome.

The same holds true for a so-called “traffic light” coalition between the SPD, Greens and FDP, or what Germans call a “Jamaica” coalition between the CDU, FDP and Greens, because the colours of the respective parties match those of the Jamaican flag.

An additional variant involving the SPD, Greens and farleft “Linke”, or Left party, has been definitively ruled out by the SPD. And the option that has some in Merkel’s entourage worried — a minority government of the SPD and Greens, with the tacit support of the Left in parliament — is also seen as a no-go in stability-obsessed Germany.

Still, if the election result is not clear-cut, the expectation is that the major parties will sound each other out on most of these combinations.

Everyone will be talking to everyone, meaning talks on forming a new government could stretch well into November, as they did in 2005 when incumbent Gerhard Schroeder initially refused to concede defeat to Merkel because of her razor-thin margin of victory.

If the SPD does buckle and link up with Merkel again, the consensus is that it will demand — and eventually get — its pound of flesh in terms of policy concessions.

July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com | CYPRUS | 3

How much did the Mari explosion cost? as well as losses to the wider economy, he estimated that the explosion would cost the economy just under EUR 3 bln, or 17% of GDP. Credit Suisse estimated a rebuild cost for Vasilikos power station of EUR 1.5 bln and a total cost to the economy of EUR Director, Sapienta 2.4 bln, or just under 14% of GDP. The University of Cyprus Economics Ltd expected a drop in GDP of 2.4% (either my Greek is bad or they did not specify whether it was a nominal or real drop).

The Mari explosion, which claimed 13 lives, occurred two I also made some estimates in this newspaper, in which I years ago tomorrow. estimated that debt/GDP ratio would rise to 75.6% of GDP by At the time various projections were made for how much it the end of 2012, compared with a debt ratio of 69.5% without had cost the economy. There was the direct cost to the the explosion, implying a debt-cost of around EUR 1.2 bln.

Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC), which was insured for The final debt/GDP ratio for 2012 was 85.8%. But without EUR 1.96 bln but only EUR 600 mln for one event. the EUR 1.9 bln bond to bail out Laiki, the ratio would have Then there was the wider cost to the economy. Electricity been close to my estimate, at 75.2% of GDP. prices shot up even higher and electricity output, which Of course, this underlines the fact that separating out the contributes to economic growth and accounts for around 2% of impact of Mari from the impact of a deteriorating banking gross value-added, plunged by 6.4% in 2011. sector is in the end an impossible task.

At the high end of estimates was Alex Apostolides of Cyprus had already lost access to international markets in European University. Taking the combination of losses to EAC May 2011 because of Cyprus’ exposure to Greece and the final deal on the Greek haircut came out in February, which made Laiki effectively bankrupt. Perhaps the R e a l GD P g ro w t h most we will ever be able to say, ( % c h a n g e o v e r s a m e p e r i o d o f p r e v i o u s y ea r , s e a s o n a l l y a d j u s t e d ) 4.0 looking at the quarterly GDP growth Mari explosion 3.0 rates, is that the Mari explosion 2.0 tipped us decisively into recession.

1.0 Real GDP moved from 1.5% growth in the second quarter of 0.0 2011 to a decline of 0.3% in the -1.0 third quarter. The pace of decline -2.0 has been on an accelerating trend -3.0 ever since.

-4.0 For monthly analysis on the -5.0 Cyprus economy and politics visit 2010Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 2011Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 2012Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 2013Q1 www.sapientaeconomics.com

By Fiona Mullen

E A C : V a s s i l i k o r e p a i r s c o s t €1 6 5 m l n

The cost to repair the power station at Vassiliko, decimated by the Mari munitions blast two years ago, was kept ay 165 mln euros, according to the Electricity Authority of Cyprus, with officials saying that this was below the “optimistic scenario” of 330 mln and far lower than the “extreme scenario” of 700 mln.

The cost of the repair was covered by Atlantic Insurance and their international reinsurers, XL Group.

The steam turbine Unit 2 is expected to come online at the end of August, raising the power plant’s installed output

capacity to 860MW. Industry experts say that the real cost to the Authority and to taxpayers is much higher as a lot of the repair work was done in-house, using the EAC’s own resources and personnel, while the cost of renting mobile generators has not been included.

Furthermore, compensation for damage caused by the explosion that killed 13 people at the adjacent naval base, has yet to be calculated, as individuals seek reparation from the government, not the EAC.

Pa pacosta s in ho spit al af ter g uilt y v erd ic t

Former defence minister Costas Papacostas was hospitalised after a hypertensive crisis attack, moments after he and three senior fire and rescue officers were found guilty as charged by a court on multiple counts of manslaughter and negligence that caused an explosion at a military base two years ago, killing 13 soldiers and rescue workers.

Papacostas and the other three senior fire service officers, Andreas Nicolaou, Charalambos Charalambous and Andreas Loizides, could face long jail terms when they appear for sentencing on July 24.

The three officers were found guilty only counts of causing death by negligence.

“We have no doubt the defendant was aware of the risks... but closed his eyes to the danger,” presiding Criminal Court Judge Tefkros Economou said in his verdict at a hearing attended by dozens of relatives clutching photos of the victims.

Former foreign minister Markos Kyprianou was acquitted together with deputy military commander, Savvas Argyrou, while G. Georgiades, a senior defence ministry official had turned witness for the prosecution. Relatives of the seamen and the firemen who were killed when the containers exploded on July 11, 2011, screamed “murderers” in front of the Larnaca District court as Kyprianou was found innocent.

BOCY to close 12 more branches l

Execs continue to march past investigators

Bank of Cyprus is expected to close a further 12 branches by next month, raising the total closures to 29 so far.

The bank currently operates 202 branches, including those it absorbed from the Popular Laiki Bank, with the total workforce now estimated at 5,760. Last week, the bank announced a redundancy package with a ceiling set at 150,000 euros, to allow 1,200 to 1,500 people to leave as part of the restructuring plan undertaken by interim CEO Christos Sorotos upon the advice of consultants McKinsey & Co. The offer is valid until the end of July and is applicable to all Group personnel, as well as staff at subsidiaries and the employees of former Laiki.

The basic package correspond to a monthly wage for every two years’ of service, plus a bonus of five salaries, as well as medical cover until the end of 2014. At least 50% of all loans must be settled.

Meanwhile, senior banking executives continue to roll past the panel probing the “banking scandal” to try to shed some light on actions that led to both banks buying toxic Greek government bonds that ultimately spelt their downfall.

One of the most interesting appearances will be that of former CEO Andreas Eliades, who is expected to appear on July 22. Last week, he had been named as some of the top executives at Bank of Cyprus taking home close to half a

million euros during the lender’s heyday.

Eliades, who resigned in July 2012, earned 324,000 euros in salary and received 273,600 in bonuses.

Yiannis Kypri, the last CEO prior to the bank’s downfall, got a paycheque of 213,750 euros plus 128,250 in bonuses.

Former finance minister Charilaos Stavrakis, a deputy group CEO in 2005, earned wages of 242,820 euros and a bonus of 171,000, according to the testimony of board member Andreas Pittas who sat on the bank’s remuneration committee.

In his earlier testimony, Kypri pointed the finger at Eliades for the ultimate responsibility to buy the Greek government bonds and exposing the bank to billions in losses.

Getting ready for first Troika assessment Finance Minister Haris Georgiades said that the government is preparing intensively for the first assessment by the Troika of international lenders on July 17, adding that it has been agreed with EU partners that the Bank of Cyprus should exit from the resolution regime as soon as possible.

Referring to Monday’s Eurogroup meeting and to the discussion on the progress achieved in implementing the bailout programme, Georgiades said that the main question is the banking sector.

Referring to the importance of regular assessments, he said that this process would essentially be repeated every three months, adding that at the end of each assessment, the Memorandum of Understanding with the Troika will be updated and on the basis of the evaluation a decision will be taken for the next tranche.

The programme provides for two tranches in 2013, one to be paid at the end of September and the second at the end of the year, the Finance Minister added.

Asked about public finances, Georgiadis said that the figures in the first five months are better than forecasted and better than last year.

Despite positive indications, we do not work based on these data, but on much more conservative scenarios, he said, explaining that public spending will be reduced by 11% in 2014.

Referring to the public sector, he said that it has to be smaller in size, more efficient and less costly.

July 10 - 16, 2013

4 CYPRUS financialmirror.com

12 steps to find a job in a tough market You are young, educated and unemployed! You have been out of a job for more than a year and the prospects for a job now look bleaker than ever. You are not alone. Over 30% of your peers are also unemployed and thousands more are expected to join the ranks of youth unemployment, fresh out of university in the coming months. The traditional employers of choice, the public and semi-public sector and the banks are not hiring; in fact they are about to lay off thousands. The educational sector is also overstaffed with over 40,000 on the waiting lists. You despair and you give up searching. Don’t! With the right moves you can find a job. It is a challenge you can turn into the best opportunity of your life to develop what it takes not to find yourself again out of a job. Keep reading.

As young people you may lack experience but you have other qualities and competencies that older people with experience

By Dr. Theodore Panayotou Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM)

lack. You have energy and enthusiasm. You are connected and are social-media savvy. You have computer and internet skills and general ICT competence that companies need but most of their current employees and managers lack. You know what people of your generation (the Y generation), the target market of most companies, want. You have been exposed to more information than the previous two generations combined. You know a lot; the question is how you leverage it, how you capitalise on it to get your first job, your next job or a better job. Also, remember that you are prepared to work for less than older people with more obligations and a load of bills to pay. Here are some tips you may find useful in getting your dream job or at least the job which will get you the next job in this difficult job market.

1.

Decide what do you really want to do. Where do you see yourself in five to ten years? Seek people in similar roles and ask for their advice��������������������������������������������� . Take responsibility for your own career development. Prepare a career plan, develop a personal brand that highlights your values, skills and strengths, and determine how to best market yourself.

2.

Without prior experience in the field, how can you prove your capability to a potential employer? You are qualified to do X, but prospective employers want you to do Y. How can you get from here to there? How can you get the next job that will get you the next job? The answer is leverage, with any prior experience you happen to have. People who are good at presenting their prior experience in a way that allows for an easy translation to the desired job can narrow the gap between their past experience and future capabilities.

3.

Get work experience anyway you can; even if it means working for free. Expand your experience. Volunteer for special projects or assignments that are outside your everyday life. Volunteering is a great source of experience, skills and con-

tacts. It opens doors and leads to opportunities that you didn’t even now that existed.

4.

Get more education which is applied, relevant and practical. Don’t rely on your academic education which is probably too theoretical and geared to a very different labour market.

Today’s employers don’t care about what degrees you have or even what you know, but what you can do with what you know and how much value you can create for them. Specialise in more than one area. Today, companies look for specialists who have a portfolio of applied skills and are flexible and can move quickly between tasks and assignments.

5.

Practice self-management. Adopt a can-do and winning attitude and a sense of urgency. Flexibility and fast response are essential in today’s uncertain and fast changing world. Learn to prioritise activities and manage your time. Develop a professional image and adopt a set of core values to ensure ethical personal and professional conduct. In today’s environment this is a great asset in great demand and scarce supply. Warren Buffett, the most successful investor ever and one of the three richest men in the world, advises employers to hire only people with integrity, intelligence and passion.

6.

Hone your communication skills; they make or break careers. Pick the areas that need your attention – skills such as listening, presenting, influencing, persuading, or distilling messages – and commit to improvement. Oral and written communication and presentation skills are key in getting you a job, in keeping it and in advancing in your career. It is all about your ability to articulate and communicate messages to different audiences effectively and persuasively, both orally and in writing. How? Practice, practice, practice!

7.

Expand your network of contacts. The best time to increase your network is today. Get out and about, and don’t forget to schmooze and network. Referrals are a vital aspect of getting any job, particularly if it stretches you in a new direction.

Get involved in groups such as professional associations, charitable organisations, or even sports leagues. Step into leadership roles and make your expertise known. In this way you practice and strengthen your leadership and team-playing skills which you will need in any job.

8.

Find a guide. Mentors can serve as influential role models and provide important guidance for your career. Reach out to a potential mentor within the company or industry of your interest and see if he or she would be open to mentoring you for a specific purpose and timeframe. Adopt a mindset for teaming and collaborating, and put it into daily practice. Working with and through others is requisite to innovating, creating, and producing business results.

9.

Interview constantly. You can’t possibly know what you’re missing until you see it, and looking exposes you to options and opportunities. Identify the potential employers you want to work for and learn everything you possibly can about them, through your contacts, their website, their reports, market studies, the media, etc. Understand what are their challenges, their strategy and their needs. Determine how you can create value for them, in the multiple of what they might pay you and ensure you have the skills to deliver. Customise your curriculum vitae to the job you have designed for yourself highlighting your relevant skills, your understanding of the company and your

ability to create value for them. Your CV, your cover letter and your whole approach must stand out from the rest and your offering must be irresistible to the employer, to get you at least an interview. Persistence here pays!

10. At the interview, put everything on the table. When it comes to your career, you need to be ready to move, to relocate, to commute, whatever it takes. And don’t wait for them to bring it up. Tell them what you’re willing to do. Otherwise, they’ll just hire somebody close to the company’s home town. If it’s something you want, just say yes to whatever it takes to get the job and figure out how to do it later.

11. Act faster. Forget about opportunity knocking - you need to be there in the doorway even before knuckles knock on the door. When a potential prospect shows even the slightest bit of interest, don’t sit around and wait for something to happen.

Act fast. And when you think you’re acting fast, act faster. Now more than ever, in this ultra-fast paced world we work in, if you snooze, you lose, that’s for sure.

12. Use the “one thing leads to another” career strategy.

Accepting pay below the market rate is a temporary disadvantage you should be willing to accept, if it means gaining the experience and exposure that will lead to a new position. So, take that job in order to learn skills for your next job. Your first job may be a flop, but it might open up a whole new world and network. Sooner or later, you’ll find what you’re looking for. Just like climbing a tree, sooner or later, you get to the top.

The common thread through all of this is to gain exposure, network, follow up fast, keep moving, and when you see something you like, go get it. Always remember the key is not resources but resourcefulness!

Dr. Theodore Panayotou is Director of the Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) and ex-Professor of Economics and the Environment at Harvard University. He has served as consultant to the UN and to governments in the U.S., China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Cyprus. He has published extensively and was recognised for his contribution to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. theo@ciim.ac.cy

How to determine the true worth of a company In today’s turbulent business environment business appraisals are needed for a variety of reasons such as mergers, acquisitions, business planning, reorganisation, spin-offs, liquidations, bankruptcy, buy-sell agreements, shareholder disputes, insurance claims, damages litigation, IPOs, etc. Business valuation is a sophisticated blend of art and science that aims to provide an impartial opinion of value and the CIIM Business School is hosting a workshop in Nicosia next week on “How to Determine the True Worth of a Company”.

The workshop, to be held on Thursday, July 18 from 8.45am to 1pm, is a fundamental overview of the most common approaches and methods in business valuation. It will provide a general overview of valuation standards and engagement considerations in the determination of the real worth of companies.

Led by trainer and financial forensics expert and Financial

Mirror contributor Rakis Christoforou, the learning objectives of the workshop are to familiarise participants with business valuation principles and standards; to help understand the business valuation approaches and methods; to help estimate discount, capitalisation rates and the cost of capital; to understand normalisation adjustments; to examine the asset approach and its methods; to examine the income approach and its methods; to examine the market approach and its methods; to explore the discount for lack of control and the discount for lack of marketability; and, to provide review of common errors in valuation reports.

Rakis Christoforou will be presenting case studies to give participants a better, clearer understanding of the process associated with completing a business valuation.

The workshop is open to all company officers and managers, bank officers and decision makers, as well as regulators, academics and

business students.

Rakis is the first qualified accountant (CPA) in Cyprus and Greece to have obtained the Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) and Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) certifications after passing two rigorous exams in New York and meeting professional education and experience requirements. He has recently delivered seminars on forensic accounting for The ICPAC and the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). Over the years he has also delivered a number of seminars for bank officers on the subjects of corporate lending and financial statement analysis.

The workshop participation fee is €50. For registration and information contact: Sophie Kyriacou on 22462246, sophie@ciim.ac.cy, www.ciim.ac.cy .

July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com | CYPRUS | 5

Capital adequacy requirements for CIFs

By Rakis Christoforou BBA, CPA/ABV/CFF, CGMA, ACFE)

The purpose of the Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process (ICAAP) and Pillar 2 in the Basel II framework is to ensure that financial institutions including investment Firms have sufficient available capital to meet the minimum capital requirements, even under stressed scenarios.

Pillar 2 covers two main processes: the Internal Capital Adequacy Assessment Process (ICAAP) and the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP).

The capital impact of Pillar 2 for Cyprus Investment Firms (CIFs) is likely to be significant. At the same time Pillar 2 and the ICAAP present a unique opportunity for these firms to strengthen risk and capital management.

Calculating Capital Adequacy from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 CIFs need to use as a starting point the minimum capital calculated under Pillar 1. The next step is to identify and calculate risks not fully covered under Pillar 1 as well as the risks under Pillar 2, as follows: - Risks under Pillar 1 (Credit Risk, Market Risk and Operation Risk); - Risks not fully covered under Pillar 1 (Concentration, Residual , Securitisation, Settlement, Foreign Exchange ); - Risks under Pillar 2 (Liquidity, Business, Legal and Compliance, Reputational, Strategic, Group, Other).

ICAAP Characteristics ICAAP includes everything from the daily risk management to the more strategic capital management. Moreover, a greater rigour in the use of stress-testing by financial institutions is registering in the current environment of heightened volatility.

Characteristics of ICAAP include: - ICAAP is by nature forward-looking.

- The ICAAP process requires changes in the definition of risk appetite, tolerance and strategy by taking advantage of the new regulatory requirements.

- Sound identification and quantification of all material risks, allowing the determination of an economic capital measurement consistent with the investment firm’s risk profile and offering protection to the firm’s own funds.

- A correct attribution of roles and responsibilities to different process owners fosters the consciousness that the ICAAP process involves the whole structure of the institution.

- Although some institutions at first considered their ICAAP as a regulatory compliance exercise, they must now leverage on Pillar 2 to strengthen and to promote the full integration of risk, liquidity and capital management within strategic planning and business operations.

Pillar 2 Challenges The implementation of Pillar 2 is, however, a challenge, not only in terms of technical and quantitative expertise for reviewing the ICAAP, but also on qualitative aspects, such as how to foster the dialogue between CIFs that would enhance the ICAAP and the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) under the authority of the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).

The ICAAP should be customised for each firm, taking into

account the particular risks and information available in order to consider the extent to which capital management is embedded within an investment firm, including the extent and the use of capital modeling or scenario analysis and stress testing within the firm’s capital management policy.

Analysis of investment firms abroad has shown emerging benefits in implementing a risk management process, even if the progress on Pillar 2 is still continuing. By working closely with all stakeholders, prudential guidelines could be issued to establish a comprehensive process of Pillar 2 implementation.

Conclusion If there is one thing that the recent financial crisis has highlighted, it is the importance of a risk management framework which is able to deal with risk types beyond those included within Basel II Pillar 1, i.e. credit, market and operational risks. In the light of the Pillar 2 requirements, financial institutions including CIFs are obliged to strengthen their firm-wide risk management to foster the development of a robust risk and capital management process.

The Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) under the authority of CySEC is soon expected to start requesting for the submission of ICAAP reports, explaining how CIFs implemented and embedded the ICAAP process.

Rakis Christoforou is the first qualified Accountant in Cyprus to hold the Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) and Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) certifications. He is a member of many accounting associations including the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Cyprus (ICPAC). He is also the Vice Chairman of the ICPAC’s Economic Crime and Forensic Accounting (ECFA) Committee. Rakis delivered a workshop recently on Risk Management at CIIM. rakis@spidernet.com.cy

July 10 - 16, 2013

6 | OPINION | financialmirror.com

Justice is blind EDITORIAL “Justice is blind” is the phrase that refers to Lady Justice (the courts) that feels the weights she is holding up, and makes a verdict on what’s right and what’s wrong.

That could well be the case of the verdict in Larnaca Criminal Court that found four of the six defendants in the politically-volatile Mari case to be guilty of manslaughter and criminal negligence for the deaths of 13 seamen and firemen exactly two years ago. The other two who were acquitted, have already been tried in the eyes of the public, regardless if they were guilty or not in the whole case that stank of political and public incompetence, right from the

beginning. As yet, none of the political leadership that was in government on July 11, 2011 has come forward to apologise, because the explosion at Mari, that decimated the Vasiliko power station and sank the economy into darkness, was the result of political arrogance, where the ruling administration tried to compromise between the harsh demands of western powers and allegiances to Syria and sponsor Iran. The cargo had reached Cyprus waters two years earlier and the government was hesitant to follow international sanctions. As a result, a political decision was taken to keep the arms shipment onshore and no further initiative followed on how to store the dangerous cargo and how to get rid of it, eventually.

At least, four people have been found guilty. Others, too, should have been charged with minor offences, basically

for knowing about the risks involved and not doing anything. The verdict will not bring back the 13 people who died for nothing. But at least it will revive some faith in the legal system and, some day, in the political leadership of this land.

Emerging countries need to focus on public transport systems

By Eberhard Rhein

Shipping Chamber, TEPAK get closer The Cyprus Shipping Chamber signed an “Alliance of Cooperation” (AoC) with the Cyprus University of Technology (TEPAK) on Friday in Limassol that aims to boost their cooperation and plan to set up a marine engineering course.

The Protocol of the Alliance of Cooperation was signed by CSC President Capt. Eugen Adami and the Rector of the CUT, Dr. Elpida Keravnou-Papailiou.

The AoC aims to facilitate the further strengthening of the already existing cooperation, the further development of new innovative technologies and accomplished human resources, and the further development and enhancement of Cyprus as an all embracing international maritime centre of excellence.

As part of the AoC, both parties have agreed to cooperate in fields such as students’ practical orientation learning experience, maritime training and education, research & development, information exchange and knowledge sharing, and joint public relations activities. In particular, one of the first areas for collaboration will be to examine the possibility of the establishment and development of a Marine Engineering Department, which will boost the University’s image and may also act as a catalyst for students to choose a career in shipping.

FinancialMirror Published every Wednesday by Financial Mirror Ltd. www.financialmirror.com Tel. 22 678 666 Fax. 22 678 664 P.O. Box 16077, CY2085 Nicosia Publisher/Managing Editor Masis der Parthogh masis@financialmirror.com Greek Section Editor Angela Komodromou angelak@financialmirror.com Editorial submissions: info@financialmirror.com Advertising inquiries: marketing@financialmirror.com Subscriptions: http://www.financialmirror.com/signup/index.html

Hundreds of thousands Brazilian citizens took to the streets in recent weeks to protest against high public transport fares, publicly financed football stadiums, inadequate investments in education and health and, last not least, rampant corruption.

High transport fares have been the detonator of these unprecedented demonstrations in one of the most successful emerging countries; and the Brazilian government has reacted to the them by setting aside billions of Euro for improving public transport.

Public transport costs and fares are linked to individual car use: as people switch to cars demand for public transport falls and raises its costs. Developed countries have seen this happen until congestion levels made municipalities and citizens rediscover the advantages of public transport.

In the last three decades European cities have stepped up efforts towards improving their public transport services. This has induced increasing numbers of urban dwellers to abandon their car and rediscover urban living.

Emerging countries are increasingly confronted with urban traffic congestion. While promoting individual car ownership and building roads, they have ignored the consequences for urban sprawl, air pollution and health. This is not sustainable

as trends in developed countries show.

They need to engage in forward planning for their rapidly growing cities, locate people nearer to their work place and minimise the need for cars by offering low-cost public transport systems.

To this end, they should provide incentives for using the bus or metro. The use of cars must be made more expensive, while bus and metro fares should become cheaper, if necessary through public subsidies.

European experience shows that this is possible to achieve with a comprehensive long-term approach.

China should be the first to make a forward leap towards more environment-friendly cities. Presently, its citizens suffer more than elsewhere from hazardous pollution, due to lax regulations and control. Urban traffic is the worst offender alongside heavy industry and excessive use of coal for heating.

The incoming government has committed to tackle the issue. It also aims to “urbanise” some 250 mln people in the course of the next 15 years, the most ambitious organised migration programme ever launched. This will offer a unique opportunity for building proper cities with a minimum of congestion and traffic pollution and allow China to become the major trend setter for urban design and public transport in other emerging countries.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Eberhard Rhein served as chef de cabinet to the Commission VP in charge of external relations and director responsible for the Mediterrranean and Arab world. For the past ten years he has focused on global environmental issues. He also gives a course on economic policy at the “Mediterranean Academy for Diplomatic Studies” in Malta.

New double tax treaty ratified by Ukraine On July 4, the Ukrainian parliament approved the bill for ratification of the new double tax treaty of Cyprus - Ukraine on income and capital that was signed back in November 2012.

If Cyprus ratifies the treaty and the notifications are exchanged during 2013, then the new treaty will be applicable from January 1, 2014.

The new double tax treaty will replace the Cyprus - Former USSR Income and Capital Tax Treaty of 1982.

Cyprus and Ukraine also signed a protocol on economic, scientific, technical and industrial cooperation on June 27, 2012.

Such agreements, especially the new double tax treaty, will surely boost the cooperation between the two countries, according to an announcement issued by Eurofast Global, the Cyprus-based professional services company with offices in

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south east Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.

Detailed analysis of the new Cyprus-Ukraine double tax treaty as well as the news relating to the protocol on economic, scientific, technical and industrial cooperation can be found on website www.eurofast.eu under the news/views/tax briefings section.

Eurofast Ukraine said in the announcement that it “welcomes the new development as it will not only redefine relations between the two countries, but we also believe that it will be the keystone for new cooperation opportunities between the two countries in the field of business.”

The company recently appointed Nadiya Omelchuk as its representative at the Eurofast Kiev office, nadiya.omelchuk@eurofast.eu.

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July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com | COMMENT | 7

The free-trade charade

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Though nothing has come of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round of global trade negotiations since they were launched almost a dozen years ago, another round of talks is in the works. But this time the negotiations will not be held on a global, multilateral basis; rather, two huge regional agreements – one transpacific, and the other transatlantic – are to be negotiated. Are the coming talks likely to be more successful?

The Doha Round was torpedoed by the United States’ refusal to eliminate agricultural subsidies – a sine qua non for any true development round, given that 70% of those in the developing world depend on agriculture directly or indirectly. The US position was truly breathtaking, given that the WTO had already judged that America’s cotton subsidies – paid to fewer than 25,000 rich farmers – were illegal. America’s response was to bribe Brazil, which had brought the complaint, not to pursue the matter further, leaving in the lurch millions of poor cotton farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, who suffer from depressed prices because of America’s largesse to its wealthy farmers.

Given this recent history, it now seems clear that the negotiations to create a free-trade area between the US and Europe, and another between the US and much of the Pacific (except for China), are not about establishing a true free-trade system. Instead, the goal is a managed trade regime – managed, that is, to serve the special interests that have long dominated trade policy in the West.

There are a few basic principles that those entering the

discussions will, one hopes, take to heart. First, any trade agreement has to be symmetrical. If, as part of the “TransPacific Partnership” (TPP), the US demands that Japan eliminate its rice subsidies, the US should, in turn, offer to eliminate its production (and water) subsidies, not just on rice (which is relatively unimportant in the US) but on other agricultural commodities as well.

Second, no trade agreement should put commercial interests ahead of broader national interests, especially when non-trade-related issues like financial regulation and intellectual property are at stake. America’s trade agreement with Chile, for example, impedes Chile’s use of capital controls – even though the International Monetary Fund now recognizes that capital controls can be an important instrument of macro-prudential policy.

Other trade agreements have insisted on financial liberalization and deregulation as well, even though the 2008 crisis should have taught us that the absence of good regulation can jeopardize economic prosperity. America’s pharmaceutical industry, which wields considerable clout with the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), has succeeded in foisting on other countries an unbalanced intellectual-property regime, which, designed to fight generic drugs, puts profit ahead of saving lives. Even the US Supreme Court has now said that the US Patent Office went too far in granting patents on genes.

Finally, there must be a commitment to transparency. But those engaging in these trade negotiations should be forewarned: the US is committed to a lack of transparency. The USTR’s office has been reluctant to reveal its negotiating position even to members of the US Congress; on the basis of what has been leaked, one can understand why. The USTR’s office is backtracking on principles – for example, access to generic medicines – that Congress had inserted into earlier trade agreements, like that with Peru.

With formal tariffs already so low, negotiators will focus largely on non-tariff barriers – such as regulatory barriers. But

the USTR’s office, representing corporate interests, will almost surely push for the lowest common standard, leveling downward rather than upward. For example, many countries have tax and regulatory provisions that discourage large automobiles – not because they are trying to discriminate against US goods, but because they worry about pollution and energy efficiency.

The more general point, alluded to earlier, is that trade agreements typically put commercial interests ahead of other values – the right to a healthy life and protection of the environment, to name just two. France, for example, wants a “cultural exception” in trade agreements that would allow it to continue to support its films – from which the whole world benefits. This and other broader values should be nonnegotiable.

Indeed, the irony is that the social benefits of such subsidies are enormous, while the costs are negligible. Does anyone really believe that a French art film represents a serious threat to a Hollywood summer blockbuster? Yet Hollywood’s greed knows no limit, and America’s trade negotiators take no prisoners. And that’s precisely why such items should be taken off the table before negotiations begin. Otherwise, arms will be twisted, and there is a real risk that an agreement will sacrifice basic values to commercial interests.

If negotiators created a genuine free-trade regime that put the public interest first, with the views of ordinary citizens given at least as much weight as those of corporate lobbyists, I might be optimistic that what would emerge would strengthen the economy and improve social well-being. The reality, however, is that we have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent.

Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University. © Project Syndicate, 2013.www.project-syndicate.org

July 10 - 16, 2013

8 COMMENT financialmirror.com

The politics of a slowing China The recent financial turmoil in China, with interbank loan rates spiking to double digits within days, provides further confirmation that the world’s second-largest economy is headed for a hard landing. Fueled by massive credit growth (equivalent to 30% of GDP from 2008 to 2012), the Chinese economy has taken on a level of financial leverage that is the highest among emerging markets. This will not end well.

Indeed, a recent study by Nomura Securities finds that China’s financial-risk profile today uncannily resembles those of Thailand, Japan, Spain, and the United States on the eve of their financial crises. Each crisis-hit economy had increased its financial leverage – the ratio of domestic credit to GDP – by 30 percentage points over five years shortly before their credit bubbles popped.

Economists who insist that China’s financial leverage is not too high are a dwindling minority. Certainly the People’s Bank of China, which engineered a credit squeeze in June in an attempt to discourage loan growth, seems to believe that financial leverage has risen to dangerous levels. The only questions to be answered now concern when and how deleveraging will occur.

At the moment, China watchers are focusing on two scenarios. Under the first, a soft economic landing occurs after China’s new leadership adopts ingenious policies to curb credit growth (especially through the shadow banking system), forces overleveraged borrowers into bankruptcy, and injects fiscal resources into the banking system to shore up its capital base. China’s GDP growth, which relies heavily on credit, will take a hit. But the deleveraging process will be gradual and orderly.

Under the second scenario, China’s leaders fail to rein in credit growth, mainly because highly leveraged local governments, well-connected real-estate developers, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) successfully resist policies that would cut off their access to financing and force them into insolvency. Conse-

quently, credit growth remains unchecked until an unforeseen event triggers China’s “Lehman” moment. Should this happen, growth will collapse, many borrowers will default, and financial chaos could ensue.

Two intriguing observations emerge from these two scenarios. First, drastic financial deleveraging is unavoidable. Second, Chinese growth will fall under either scenario.

So, what impact will the coming era of financial deleveraging and decelerating growth have on Chinese politics?

Most would suggest that a period of financial retrenchment and slow GDP growth poses a serious threat to the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is based on economic performance. Rising unemployment could spur social unrest. The middle class might turn against the party. Because economic distress harms different social groups simultaneously, it could facilitate the emergence of a broad anti-CCP coalition.

Moreover, massive economic dislocation could destroy the cohesion of the ruling elites and make them more vulnerable politically.

Indeed, members of the ruling elite will be the most immediately affected by financial deleveraging. Those who borrowed recklessly during China’s credit boom are not small private firms or average consumers (household indebtedness in China is very low), but local governments, SOEs, and well-connected real estate developers (many of them family members of government officials). Technically, successful financial deleveraging means restructuring their debts and forcing some of them into bankruptcy.

By definition, such people have the political wherewithal to mount a fierce fight to preserve their wealth. But, given the huge size of China’s credit bubble and the enormous amounts of money needed to recapitalize the banking system, only some of them

By Minxin Pei Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States

will be bailed out. Those who are not will naturally harbor resentment toward those who are.

Slower GDP growth undermines elite unity according to a different political dynamic. The current Chinese system is a gigantic rent-distributing mechanism. The ruling elites have learned to live with each other not through shared beliefs, values, or rules, but by carving up the spoils of economic development. In a highgrowth environment, each group or individual could count on getting a lucrative contract or project. When growth falters, the food fight among party members will become vicious.

The people who should be most concerned with financial deleveraging and slower growth are President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang. If the deleveraging process is quick and orderly, they will emerge stronger in time for their reappointment in 2017 (the Chinese political calendar thus dictates that they turn the economy around by the first half of that year).

Xi and Li are inseparably linked with the CCP’s promise of economic prosperity and national greatness, embodied in the official catchphrase, “China dream.” What, then, will they do when faced with a political nightmare? © Project Syndicate, 2013. www.project-syndicate.org

Modernising corporate taxation How to tax the income of multinational corporations (MNCs) was an unlikely headline topic at the recent G-8 summit in Ireland. It will be a key agenda item at the upcoming G-20 summit in Russia as well. Given these companies’ significance to national and global economic performance, world leaders’ focus on the arcane intricacies of corporate taxation is easy to understand – perhaps nowhere more so than in the United States.

As the US embarks on the difficult path of corporate tax reform, it should heed the United Kingdom’s example. Even as it champions multilateral cooperation to ensure that MNCs pay their “fair” share, the British government has slashed its corporate rate, exempted the active foreign income of British MNCs from the national corporate tax, and enacted a “patent box” that stipulates a 10% tax rate on qualified patent income.

As a result of years of cuts in corporate tax rates by other countries, the US now has the highest rate among the advanced economies. Reducing the top US federal rate, currently at 35%, to a more competitive level – the OECD average is around 25% – would encourage investment and job creation in the US by both domestic and foreign MNCs. Paying for a rate cut by eliminating various corporate credits and deductions would simplify the code and trim the cost of compliance. It would also enhance efficiency by curbing tax-based distortions in companies’ investment decisions (what and where) and their choices concerning how to finance investments and which organizational forms to adopt. The Obama administration and Congressional leaders from both parties agree that a cut in the corporate tax rate should be revenue-neutral.

Other advanced industrial countries have paid for corporate rate reductions partly by restricting depreciation and other deductions. Despite lower tax rates, corporate tax revenues have not declined in these countries and represent a larger share of GDP than they do in the US. In addition to reducing its corporate tax rate, the US needs to reform the way it taxes its MNCs’ foreign earnings. All other G-8 countries (and most OECD countries) boost their MNCs’ competitiveness by taxing only their domestic income, exempting most of their foreign earnings from domestic taxation (an approach known as a territorial system). The US, by contrast, taxes its MNCs’ worldwide income, with taxes paid elsewhere credited

against their US tax liability to avoid double taxation.

The worldwide system puts US-based MNCs at a competitive disadvantage. They must pay the high US corporate rate on profits earned by their affiliates in low-tax foreign locations, while foreign MNCs headquartered in territorial systems pay only the local tax rate on such profits.

Current US law blunts this disadvantage by allowing US companies to defer paying US tax on profits earned abroad by foreign affiliates until they are repatriated to their US owners.

As a consequence of both the high US tax rate and deferral, USbased MNCs have a strong incentive to keep their foreign earnings abroad. Indeed, their non-US affiliates currently hold an estimated $2 trillion in accumulated foreign earnings.

These earnings are “locked out” and unavailable to finance investment and job creation in the US, without incurring significant additional US taxes. Moreover, US companies incur efficiency costs from the suboptimal use of deferred earnings and higher levels of debt, as well as the burden of maintaining worldwide tax strategies. And these costs, estimated at 1-5% of deferred earnings, have been rising rapidly in recent years, in line with the growing share of foreign markets in US-based MNCs’ revenues.

A territorial system would address the competitiveness disadvantages, the “lock-out” effect, and the inefficiencies of the US’s worldwide approach. But it would not reduce incentives for US corporations to shift their reported profits to low-tax jurisdictions; on the contrary, such incentives would be even stronger in a pure territorial system. Given increasing globalization of business activity; the rising importance of intangible capital that is difficult to price and easy to move (for example, patents and brands); competitive cuts in national corporate tax rates; and the spread of tax havens, income shifting and the resulting tax-base erosion have become a major policy concern throughout the OECD. In response, other developed economies have used a variety of techniques to create “hybrid” territorial systems aimed at countering tax-base erosion. Such systems include transfer-pricing rules based on OECD guidelines (used by the US as well), limits on interest deductibility, and domestic taxation of some kinds of income earned in low-tax locations where companies report large earnings but carry out little real economic activity.

As part of comprehensive corporate tax reform that includes a

By Laura Tyson A former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers

revenue-neutral rate cut, the US Congress is currently considering a hybrid territorial reform and evaluating several measures to counter tax-base erosion and income shifting, including those used by other advanced countries. Republican Congressman David Camp, who is leading the legislative effort in the House of Representatives, has proposed an innovative alternative that rests on the “destination principle”: MNCs’ taxable earnings should be based largely on where their products are sold, rather than on where the companies are headquartered, where their production and financing occur, or where their profits are reported.

Camp’s proposal would significantly reduce incentives to move manufacturing abroad for tax reasons. By contrast, both America’s worldwide system and other countries’ hybrid territorial systems rely on an “origin or source principle” that bases taxation largely on where input costs and production activities are located.

The US last reformed its business tax code in 1986, when it had one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world and the competitive dynamics of the global economy were very different.

It is time for another comprehensive corporate tax reform, one that reduces the tax rate, broadens the tax base, and adopts a hybrid territorial approach with effective base-erosion safeguards.

Laura Tyson, a former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently serving as an outside economic adviser to the Alliance for Competitive Taxation, a coalition of 42 American companies.

The views expressed here are her own. © Project Syndicate, 2013. www.project-syndicate.org

EB¢OMA¢IAIA OIKONOMIKH ¶√§π∆π∫∏ EºHMEPI¢A AÚ. 923

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∆∂∆∞ƒ∆∏, 10 π√À§π√À, 2013

ŒÚ¯ÂÙ·È Ë ∆ÚfiÈη ÁÈ· ÙÔ 1 Ô ÙÂÛÙ Η κυπριακή κυβέρνηση ετοιµάζεται εντατικά και θα συνεχίσει και τισ επÞµενεσ µέρεσ να προετοιµάζεται για την πρώτη αξιολÞγηση τησ τρÞικασ που θα ξεκινήσει στισ 17 Ιουλίου, ενώ συµφωνεί µε τουσ εταίρουσ θεωρώντασ Þτι η έξοδοσ απÞ το καθεστώσ εξυγίανσησ τησ Τράπεζασ Κύπρου το συντοµÞτερο δυνατÞ αποτελεί την πρώτη προτεραιÞτητα. Την επισήµανση αυτή έκανε χθεσ ο ΥπουργÞσ Οικονοµικών Χάρησ Γεωργιάδησ, αναφερÞµενοσ στην συνεδρία του Eurogroup και στη συζήτηση που έγινε για την πορεία του κυπριακού προγράµµατοσ και κατ? επέκταση τησ οικονοµίασ. ΑναφερÞµενοσ στη σηµασία των τριµηνιαίων αξιολογήσεων, ο ΥΠΟΙΚ επισήµανε Þτι η εν λÞγω διαδικασία ουσιαστικά αποτελεί και θα αποτελεί κάθε τρίµηνο επανάληψη σε Þλο

το βάθοσ και την έκταση τησ διαδικασία καταρτισµού του αρχικού µνηµονίου. Στο τέλοσ κάθε αξιολÞγησησ το µνηµÞνιο θα επικαιροποιείται και στη βάση τησ αξιολÞγησησ θα λαµβάνεται η απÞφαση για την επÞµενη δÞση, είπε. Ο σχεδιασµÞσ προβλέπει δύο δÞσεισ για 2013 , η µια στο τέλοσ Σεπτεµβρίου και η δεύτερη στο τέλοσ του έτουσ, ενώ οι δÞσεισ θα είναι µικρÞτερεσ απÞ την αρχική δÞση του Μαΐου και το ακριβέσ ποσÞ θα σχετίζεται µε την ανάγκη και κάλυψη των ελλειµµάτων, ανέφερε. Ερωτηθείσ σχετικά µε την πορεία των δηµοσιονοµικών τησ χώρασ, είπε Þτι τα δεδοµένα του πρώτου πενταµήνου είναι καλύτερα απÞ τισ προβλέψεισ για το 2013 και καλύτερα απÞ τα αντίστοιχα περυσινά. ΩστÞσο, Þπωσ είπε, δεν θεωρεί αυτήν τη θετική εικÞνα ωσ

ενδεικτική τησ πορείασ που θα ακολουθήσει η οικονοµία και τα οικονοµικά στο επÞµενο διάστηµα. Ο κ. Γεωργιάδησ, ανέφερε Þτι οι δηµÞσιεσ δαπάνεσ θα είναι µειωµένεσ κατά 11% το 2014.

Ÿ¯È Û ӤԢ˜ ÊfiÚÔ˘˜ Σχετικά µε το δηµÞσιο τοµέα, είπε Þτι τον θέλουµε µικρÞτερο πιο αποδοτικÞ, λιγÞτερο σπάταλο, θέλουµε να θέσουµε τα δηµÞσια οικονοµικά σε µια βάση βιωσιµÞτητασ ώστε να απαλλαγούµε απÞ κηδεµονίεσ και εξαρτήσεισ και στο πλαίσιο αυτÞ ο ρυθµÞσ θα παραµείνει µέχρι το τέλοσ εντατικÞσ. Σύµφωνα µε τον ΥπουργÞ Οικονοµικών έµφαση πρέπει να δοθεί στον εξορθολογισµÞ των δαπανών και Þχι σε νέουσ φÞρουσ, δεδο-

µένου Þτι την τελευταία διετία και µέσα στα πλαίσια των λεγÞµενων έκτακτων πακέτων έχουν επιβληθεί περίπου 20 νέοι φÞροι και αυξήσεισ υφιστάµενων φÞρων, ενώ το αποτέλεσµα είναι Þτι τα φορολογικά έσοδα αντί να αυξάνονται µειώνονται και αυτÞ είναι η αναπÞφευκτη κατάσταση µιασ πολιτικήσ που βάζει φÞρουσ σε περίοδο ύφεσησ.

BOC: §Ô˘Î¤ÙÔ Û ¿ÏÏ· 12 ˘ÔηٷÛÙ‹Ì·Ù· Κλείνουν µέχρι τισ 2 Αυγούστου ακÞµη 12 υποκαταστήµατα τησ νέασ Τράπεζασ Κύπρου, αυξάνοντασ έτσι τον αριθµÞ των υποκαταστηµάτων που έχουν κλείσει µέχρι σήµερα στα 29. Ο τελικÞσ αριθµÞσ των καταστηµάτων που θα κλείσουν µέχρι τισ 2 Αυγούστου συζητήθηκε στισ αρµÞδιεσ επιτροπέσ τησ Τράπεζασ και έχει παρθεί η τελική απÞφαση για κλείσιµο 12 επιπλέον υποκαταστηµάτων. Μέχρι τισ 5 Ιουλίου είχαν κλείσει 17 υποκαταστήµατα, µε το προσωπικÞ να µεταφέρεται Þπου υπάρχει ανάγκη στο δίκτυο καταστηµάτων τησ τράπεζασ.

O επÞµενοσ αριθµÞσ υποκαταστηµάτων που θα κλείσει θα ανέρχεται περίπου στα 20. ΩστÞσο, ο τελικÞσ αριθµÞσ θα εξαρτηθεί/διαµορφωθεί και απÞ το σχέδιο αναδιάρθρωσησ τησ Τράπεζασ που θα παραδοθεί τέλοσ Σεπτεµβρίου απÞ τον Οίκο Mckinsey και στο οποίο θα περιλαµβάνεται και το κλείσιµο αριθµÞ καταστηµάτων. Η Τράπεζα λειτουργεί σήµερα στην Κύπρο

µε 202 υποκαταστήµατα και 5.640 υπαλλήλουσ, εκ των οποίων τα 85 υποκαταστήµατα και οι 2.390 υπάλληλοι έχουν µεταφερθεί απÞ τη Λαϊκή.

Nα σηµειωθεί Þτι απÞ την ∆ευτέρα 8 Ιουλίου έχει τεθεί σε εφαρµογή το πρÞγραµµα εθελούσιασ εξÞδου των τραπεζικών υπαλλήλων τησ Τρ. Κύπρου και Λαϊκήσ. Οι ενδιαφερÞµενοι µπορούν να υποβάλουν τισ αιτήσεισ τουσ για πρÞωρη αποχώρηση απÞ την τράπεζα µέχρι τισ 26 Ιουλίου 2013. Στουσ υπαλλήλουσ που θα επιλέξουν το σχέδιο θα δοθεί µισÞσ µηνιαίοσ µισθÞσ ανά έτοσ υπηρεσίασ και επιπλέον πέντε µισθοί. Η µάξιµουµ αποζηµίωση ανέρχεται στισ 150,000 ευρώ. Συγκεκριµένα το πρÞγραµµα προνοεί την καταβολή ενÞσ εφάπαξ ποσού ωσ αποζηµίωση που δεν θα ξεπερνά τισ 150,000 ευρώ και την κατάθεση τουλάχιστον του 50% του ποσού αποζηµίωσησ στισ δανειακέσ υποχρεώσεισ του κάθε εργαζÞµενου. Ο αρχικÞσ στÞχοσ που έχει τεθεί για εθελούσια έξοδο ανέρ-

χεται στουσ 1200-1500 εργαζÞµενουσ. Η τελευταία ηµεροµηνία αποχώρησησ καθορίζεται η 31η Ιουλίου. Σύµφωνα µε πληροφορίεσ πενιχρÞ ήταν το ενδιαφέρον για υποβολή αίτηση εθελούσιασ εξÞδου κατά τισ δύο πρώτεσ µέρεσ

εφαρµογήσ του προγράµµατοσ. ΩστÞσο µεγάλοσ ήταν ο αριθµÞσ των ερωτηµάτων που κλήθηκε να απαντήσει η οµάδα που έχει συσταθεί για την διευκÞλυνση και επεξήγηση του σχεδίου στουσ τραπεζικούσ υπαλλήλουσ.

«∞·Á¯ÔÓÈÛÌfi˜ Ù˘ ‰ÈηÈÔÛ‡Ó˘» «Ωσ απαγχονισµÞ τησ δικαιοσύνησ», χαρακτήρισε την απÞφαση του Κακουργιοδικείου για την φονική έκρηξη στο Μαρί, η µάνα των διδύµων (εκ των 13 θυµάτων) ΠÞπη ΧριστοφÞρου. Το ΜÞνιµο Κακουργιοδικείο Κύπρου έκρινε χθεσ ένοχουσ τον πρώην υπουργÞ Άµυνασ, Κώστα Παπακώστα µε την κατηγορία τησ ανθρωποκτονίασ και τησ πρÞκλησησ θανάτου εξ’ αµελείασ και τουσ Ανδρέα Νικολάου (∆ιευθυντή τησ Πυροσβεστικήσ Υπηρεσίασ), Χαράλαµπο Χαραλάµπουσ (Υποδιευθυντή τησ Πυροσβεστικήσ Υπηρεσίασ) και Αντρέα Λοϊζίδη (∆ιοικητή τησ ΕΜΑΚ), για την φονική έκρηξη που σηµειώθηκε στη ναυτική βάση «Ευάγγελοσ Φλωράκησ» στο Μαρί στισ 11 Ιουλίου 2011. Αντίθετα οι Μ. Κυπριανού πρώην ΥπουργÞσ Εξωτερικών και Σ. Αργυρού (Τέωσ ΥπαρχηγÞσ τησ Εθνικήσ Φρουράσ) αθωώθηκαν και απαλλάχτηκαν απÞ τισ κατηγορίεσ εισ βάροσ τουσ. Η ακροαµατική διαδικασία ξεκίνησε στισ 12 Μαρτίου 2012 Þταν ενώπιον του Επαρχιακού ∆ικαστηρίου Λάρνακασ καταχωρήθηκαν οι κατηγορίεσ για τα οκτώ υπÞ κατηγορία άτοµα και ζητήθηκε ηµεροµηνία επίδοσησ των κατηγορητηρίων και ολοκληρώθηκε

στισ 30 Μαΐου 2013, ηµέρα κατά την οποία πραγµατοποιήθηκαν οι απαντητικέσ αγορεύσεισ των συνηγÞρων υπεράσπισησ των έξι κατηγορουµένων και τησ Κατηγορούσασ Αρχήσ. ΑπÞ τη φονική έκρηξη στο Μαρί έχασαν τη ζωή τουσ 13 άτοµα, ο Πλοίαρχοσ Ιωαννίδησ Ανδρέασ, ∆ιοικητήσ Ναυτικού/ ΓΕΕΦ, ο Αντιπλοίαρχοσ Λάµπρου Λάµπροσ, ∆ιοικητήσ τησ Ναυτικήσ Βάσησ, ο Αρχικελευστήσ Κλεάνθουσ Κλεάνθησ, ΥπαξιωµατικÞσ στη ∆ιοίκηση τησ Ναυτικήσ Βάσησ, ο ΕΠΥ Κελευστήσ Ηρακλέουσ Μιχάλησ, ΥπαξιωµατικÞσ στη ∆ιοίκηση τησ Ναυτικήσ Βάσησ, οι Ναύτεσ ΧριστοφÞρου Μιλτιάδησ,

ΧριστοφÞρου Χριστάκησ και Αντώνησ Χαραλάµπουσ τησ ∆ιοίκησησ Ναυτικήσ Βάσησ, ο Αρχιλοχίασ τησ Πυροσβεστικήσ Υπηρεσίασ ΠαπαδÞπουλοσ Ανδρέασ, ο Αρχιπυροσβέστησ Γιακουµήσ Γιώργοσ και οι Πυροσβέστεσ ΚρÞκοσ Βασίλησ, Ταντήσ Σπύροσ, Θεοφίλου Παναγιώτησ και Αδάµου Αδάµοσ. Αγανακτισµένοι και εξαγριωµένοι µετά την απÞφαση συγγενείσ των θυµάτων του Μαρί, φώναζαν «∆ολοφÞνοι – ∆ολοφÞνοι». Το Κακουργιοδικείο στην απÞφαση του αναφέρει Þτι απÞ την µαρτυρία που κατατέθηκε ενώπιον του προκύπτει Þτι ο Μάρκοσ Κυπριανού δεν είχε τον έλεγχο του φορτίου και Þτι απλά διαχειριζÞταν την πολιτική πτυχή του θέµατοσ. Το δικαστήριο αναφέρει Þτι τον έλεγχο και την ευθύνη του φορτίου τα είχε ο Κ. Παπακώστασ, ενώ ο Μ. Κυπριανού δεν ενεργούσε αυτοβούλωσ αλλά ακολουθούσε την πολιτική του Προέδρου τησ ∆ηµοκρατίασ. ∆ιαπιστώνει, επίσησ, πλήρη και καθολική δυσλειτουργία του κράτουσ στην υπÞθεση τησ έκρηξησ των εµπορευµατοκιβωτίων στο Μαρί. Σύµφωνα µε την απÞφαση, το κράτοσ και οι υπουργοί έχουν καθήκον προστασίασ τησ

ανθρώπινησ ζωήσ. Το δικαστήριο χαρακτήρισε, επίσησ, ορθή πολιτική απÞφαση την εκφÞρτωση του φορτίου η οποία, ωστÞσο, λήφθηκε χωρίσ την έγκριση του υπουργικού συµβουλίου. Σύµφωνα µε την απÞφαση, ο τέωσ ΥπαρχηγÞσ τησ Εθνικήσ Φρουράσ Σάββασ Αργυρού δεν είχε καµία σχέση και καµία αρµοδιÞτητα µε την υπÞθεση. ΑπÞ τη µαρτυρία φαίνεται Þτι ο Σ. Αργυρού δεν είχε «καθήκον ενέργειασ», Þπωσ αναφέρεται.

™ÙȘ 24 πÔ˘Ï›Ô˘ Ë ·ÁfiÚ¢ÛË ÁÈ· ÌÂÙÚÈ·ÛÌfi Ù˘ ÔÈÓ‹˜ Οι 4 κατηγορούµενοι που κρίθηκαν ένοχοι απÞ το Κακουργιοδικείου Λάρνακασ για την υπÞθεση τησ έκρηξησ στο Μαρί θα τελούν υπÞ κράτηση στισ Κεντρικέσ Φυλακέσ µέχρι τισ 24 Ιουλίου, ηµεροµηνία που δÞθηκε απÞ τον ΠρÞεδρο του ∆ικαστηρίου για αγÞρευση απÞ τουσ συνηγÞρουσ τουσ για µετριασµÞ τησ ποινήσ. Επίσησ, ζητήθηκε απÞ τον Ευστάθιο Ευσταθίου, συνήγορο υπεράσπισησ των Κ. Παπακώστα, Α. Νικολάου και Χ. Χαραλάµπουσ, Þπωσ µέχρι τισ 24 Ιουλίου γίνει έκθεση απÞ το Γραφείο Ευηµερίασ.

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

10 ΙΟΥΛΙΟΥ, 2013

2 | ΕΙ∆ΗΣΕΙΣ | financialmirror.com

€165 ÂÎ. ÁÈ· ÙËÓ ·ÔηٿÛÙ·ÛË ÙÔ˘ µ·ÛÈÏÈÎÔ‡ Στα 165 εκ. ευρώ αναµένεται να ανέλθει το τελικÞ κÞστοσ ανοικοδÞµησησ του Ηλεκτροπαραγωγικού Σταθµού Βασιλικού που ωσ γνωστÞ υπέστη σχεδÞν ολοκληρωτική καταστροφή στισ 11 Ιουλίου 2011 ωσ αποτέλεσµα τησ έκρηξησ πυροµαχικών στη γειτονική Ναυτική Βάση Ευάγγελοσ Φλωράκησ. Ήδη έχουν ολοκληρωθεί τα πλείστα έργα αποκατάστασησ. Αξίζει να σηµειωθεί Þτι το τελικÞ κÞστοσ ανοικοδÞµησησ είναι πολύ πιο κάτω και απÞ τισ πιο αισιÞδοξεσ προβλέψεισ των εµπειρογνωµÞνων του Ταµείου Αλληλεγγύησ τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Ένωσησ οι οποίοι είχαν επισκεφτεί τον ΣταθµÞ

τον Ιούλιο του 2011, αµέσωσ µετά την καταστροφή του για να εξετάσουν το θέµα τησ παροχήσ σχετικήσ βοήθειασ προσ την Κύπρο. Συγκεκριµένα οι Ευρωπαίοι εµπειρογνώµονεσ είχαν υπολογίσει το κÞστοσ ανοικοδÞµησησ του Σταθµού µεταξύ 330 εκ. ευρώ (αισιÞδοξη πρÞβλεψη) και 700 εκ. ευρώ (απαισιÞδοξη πρÞβλεψη), ενώ τώρα αγγίζει τα 165 εκ. ευρώ, δηλαδή το µισÞ του αισιÞδοξου κÞστουσ. Με την επαναλειτουργία και τησ Ατµοηλεκτρικήσ Μονάδασ Αρ. 2, περί το τέλοσ Αυγούστου 2013, ολοκληρώνεται το έργο ανοικοδÞµησησ του Σταθµού µε τη συνολική εγκατεστηµένη ισχύ να ανέρχεται σε 860MW.

Yfi ÙÔ Â˘Úˆ·˚Îfi ÌÈÎÚÔÛÎfiÈÔ Ù· ÔÚÁ·ÓˆÌ¤Ó· Ù·Í›‰È· Νέουσ κανÞνεσ, που εκσυγχρονίζουν την ισχύουσα σήµερα ευρωπαϊκή νοµοθεσία για τα οργανωµένα ταξίδια, πρÞτεινε η Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή, µε στÞχο την προστασία, κυρίωσ των καταναλωτών, αλλά και τον περιορισµÞ του κÞστουσ τησ γραφειοκρατίασ για τισ επιχειρήσεισ του κλάδου. Σύµφωνα µε την κοινοτική οδηγία του 1990, για τα οργανωµένα πακέτα διακοπών τα οποία περιλαµβάνουν συνδυασµÞ, για παράδειγµα, πτήσεων, ξενοδοχείων ή/και ενοικίασησ αυτοκινήτου, οι καταναλωτέσ δικαιούνται να λαµβάνουν Þλεσ τισ αναγκαίεσ πληροφορίεσ προτού υπογράψουν τη σύµβαση, να έχουν τη διαβεβαίωση Þτι ένα µέροσ αναλαµβάνει την ευθύνη για την παροχή Þλων των υπηρεσιών που περιλαµβάνει το πακέτο

ªÂÁ¿ÏÔ ÂӉȷʤÚÔÓ ÁÈ· ÊÔ›ÙËÛË ÛÙÔ ∆∂¶∞∫ Πολύ µεγάλο υπήρξε το ποσοστÞ των Κυπρίων νέων που εξασφάλισαν θέση φοίτησησ στο ΤεχνολογικÞ Πανεπιστήµιο Κύπρου και προσήλθαν για εγγραφή στα προπτυχιακά προγράµµατα σπουδών για το ακαδηµαϊκÞ έτοσ 2013-2014. Προσφέρθηκαν 544 θέσεισ φοίτησησ µέσω των Παγκυπρίων Εξετάσεων και κατά το τριήµερο 3 και 5 Ιουλίου, προσήλθαν για εγγραφή ή κράτηση θέσησ 476 νεοεισερχÞµενοι, δηλαδή ποσοστÞ 87,5%. Οι νεοεισερχÞµενοι παρακολούθησαν επίσησ και τισ ενηµερωτικέσ παρουσιάσεισ που διοργάνωσαν τα Τµήµατα του Πανεπιστηµίου, σε συνεργασία µε την Υπηρεσία Σπουδών και Φοιτητικήσ Μέριµνασ. Για το νέο Τµήµα Επιστηµών Αποκατάστασησ προσήλθαν για εγγραφή 32 νέοι που θα αποτελέσουν και τουσ πρώτουσ φοιτητέσ του Τµήµατοσ. Για τισ θέσεισ που πιθανÞν να προκύψουν ωσ κενέσ, µετά τα αποτελέσµατα που αφορούν στα ελληνικά πανεπιστήµια, υποβλήθηκαν 945 αιτήσεισ απÞ Κύπριουσ υποψηφίουσ, ενώ για τισ επιπρÞσθετεσ θέσεισ των ειδικών κατηγοριών, υποβλήθηκαν 306 αιτήσεισ.

και Þτι δικαιούνται επαναπατρισµÞ σε περίπτωση που ο ταξιδιωτικÞσ πράκτορασ πτωχεύσει. ΩστÞσο, Þπωσ επισηµαίνει η ΚοµισιÞν οι ισχύοντεσ κανÞνεσ δεν µπορούν να ανταποκριθούν στισ απαιτήσεισ τησ εποχήσ του διαδικτύου, Þπου Þλο και περισσÞτεροι καταναλωτέσ αγοράζουν ηλεκτρονικά εξατοµικευµένα πακέτα διακοπών (είτε απευθείασ απÞ έναν επαγγελµατία είτε απÞ διάφορουσ εµπορικά συνδεÞµενουσ επαγγελµατίεσ) γεγονÞσ που δηµιουργεί, αφενÞσ στουσ αγοραστέσ, αβεβαιÞτητα Þσον αφορά τα δικαιώµατά τουσ και αφετέρου στουσ επαγγελµατίεσ, ασάφεια Þσον αφορά τισ υποχρεώσεισ τουσ. Ωσ εκ τούτου, η επικαιροποίηση των κανÞνων του 1990

αποτελεί κατά κύριο λÞγο προσαρµογή τησ οδηγίασ για τα οργανωµένα ταξίδια στην ψηφιακή εποχή. Σηµαίνει Þτι µε την οδηγία θα προστατεύονται και οι επιπλέον 120 εκατοµµύρια καταναλωτέσ που αγοράζουν τέτοιεσ εξατοµικευµένεσ ταξιδιωτικέσ υπηρεσίεσ. Η µεταρρύθµιση ενισχύει την προστασία των καταναλωτών, καθώσ προβλέπει µεγαλύτερη διαφάνεια και περισσÞτερα δικαιώµατα σε περίπτωση που παρουσιαστούν προβλήµατα. Ουσιαστικά για τουσ αγοραστέσ παραδοσιακών και εξατοµικευµένων πακέτων, η σηµερινή πρÞταση συνεπάγεται αυστηρÞτερουσ ελέγχουσ για τισ προσαυξήσεισ τιµών (µε ανώτατο Þριο προσαύξησησ 10%) και υποχρέωση µείωσησ των τιµών σε αντίστοιχεσ περιπτώσεισ, και ενισχυµένα δικαιώµατα σε περίπτωση ακύρωσησ.

ª·˜ «¤Ê·Á» Ë ‰È·ÊıÔÚ¿ Το 79% των Κυπρίων πιστεύουν Þτι η διαφθορά είναι ένα σοβαρÞ πρÞβληµα στην Κύπρο, σύµφωνα µε τα ευρήµατα τησ Έρευνασ για το ΒαρÞµετρο τησ ∆ιαφθοράσ η οποία διεξήχθη απÞ τον Σεπτέµβριο του 2012 έωσ τον Φεβρουάριο του 2013. Η έρευνα διεξήχθη απÞ τη ∆ιεθνή ∆ιαφάνεια Κύπροσ (∆∆Κ), µέλοσ τησ ∆ιεθνούσ ∆ιαφάνειασ(∆∆), η οποία συνεργάστηκε µε 22 εθνικά παραρτήµατα στην ∆υτική Ευρώπη, µε σκοπÞ την διεξαγωγή τησ ετήσιασ έρευνασ του ΠαγκÞσµιου ΒαρÞµετρου τησ ∆ιαφθοράσ. ΑπÞ τα ευρήµατα τησ έρευνασ φαίνεται Þτι οι Κύπριοι αντιλαµβάνονται µια αυξανÞµενη τάση σε σχέση µε τη διαφθορά αφού το 71% των ερωτηθέντων πιστεύουν Þτι η διαφθορά έχει αυξηθεί κατά τα τελευταία 2 χρÞνια. ΕκτÞσ απÞ αυτÞ, το 79% των Κυπρίων πιστεύουν Þτι η διαφθορά είναι ένα σοβαρÞ πρÞβληµα στην Κύπρο. Επίσησ, η πλειοψηφία των Κυπρίων (68%) που έλαβαν µέροσ στην έρευνα πιστεύει Þτι οι προσωπικέσ επαφέσ στο δηµÞσιο τοµέα είναι πολύ σηµαντικέσ έτσι ώστε να γίνουν τα πράγµατα, ενώ η πλειοψηφία (90%) των ερωτηθέντων πιστεύει ακράδαντα Þτι η διακυβέρνηση του τÞπου επηρεάζεται απÞ τα συµφέροντα µικρήσ µερίδασ

πληθυσµού. Σηµειώνεται Þτι απÞ τισ 22 χώρεσ τισ ∆υτική Ευρώπη που πήραν µέροσ στην έρευνα, η Κύπροσ σηµείωσε την υψηλÞτερη βαθµολογία σχετικά µε την επίδραση των «µεγάλων συµφερÞντων». Σε ερώτηση σχετικά µε την αποτελεσµατικÞτητα τησ κυβέρνησησ στην καταπολέµηση τησ διαφθοράσ, η συντριπτική πλειοψηφία των Κυπρίων ερωτηθέντων (83%) πιστεύει Þτι οι προσπάθειεσ τησ κυβέρνησησ είναι αναποτελεσµατικέσ. Σε σύγκριση µε τισ υπÞλοιπεσ 22 χώρεσ που πήραν µέροσ στην έρευνα απÞ την ∆υτική Ευρώπη, η αντίληψη Þτι η κυβέρνηση είναι αναποτελεσµατική στισ προσπάθειέσ τησ για την καταπολέµηση τησ διαφθοράσ ήταν υψηλÞτερη στην Κύπρο. Σχετικά µε την έκταση τησ διαφθοράσ σε ιδρύµατα, οι Κύπριοι ερωτηθέντεσ πιστεύουν Þτι οι πιο διεφθαρµένεσ κατηγορίεσ είναι τα πολιτικά κÞµµατα (99%), η βουλή (95%), η αστυνοµία (94%) και τα µέσα µαζικήσ ενηµέρωσησ (93%). ΑπÞ τισ 22 χώρεσ που συµµετείχαν στην έρευνα του ΠαγκÞσµιου ΒαρÞµετρου τησ ∆ιαφθοράσ απÞ την ∆υτική Ευρώπη, η Κύπροσ κατετάγη 6η µε 19% Þσον αφορά το ποσοστÞ καταβολήσ δωροδοκίασ σε παροχήσ υπηρεσιών.

ª¤¯ÚÈ €2.700 Ë ¯ÔÚËÁ›· ÁÈ· ÂÁηٿÛÙ·ÛË ÊˆÙÔ‚ÔÏÙ·˚ÎÒÓ ΑπÞ σήµερα 10 Ιουλίου θα γίνονται δεκτέσ αιτήσεισ για δύο σχέδια τησ Ρυθµιστικήσ Αρχήσ Ενέργειασ Κύπρου (ΡΑΕΚ) για το έτοσ 2013, που αφορούν το σύστηµα Net Metering σε οικίεσ και κτίρια τοπικών αρχών, αλλά και φωτοβολταϊκά συστήµατα σε εµπορικέσ και βιοµηχανικέσ µονάδεσ. Αιτήσεισ θα γίνονται δεκτέσ ωσ την συµπλήρωση του καθορισµένου ορίου προβλεπÞµενησ δυναµικÞτητασ για το 2013 ή το αργÞτερο έωσ την 15η Νοεµβρίου. Το πρώτο σχέδιο αφορά την διευρυµένη εφαρµογή του συστήµατοσ «Συµψηφισµού µετρήσεων τησ ΕισαγÞµενησ απÞ το ∆ίκτυο µε την ΠαραγÞµενη Ηλεκτρική Ενέργεια απÞ Φωτοβολταϊκά Συστήµατα» (Net Metering) εγκατεστηµένα σε οικίεσ. Η συνολική δυναµικÞτητα είναι τησ τάξησ των 6 MW µε

χορηγία (κατηγορία 1), αλλά και τησ τάξησ των 9 MW άνευ χορηγίασ (κατηγορία 2). Επίσησ, το σχέδιο προβλέπει και την εφαρµογή του Net Metering σε κτίρια που αποτελούν έδρα τοπικών αρχών, δυναµικÞτητασ 0,2 MW άνευ χορηγίασ (κατηγορία 3). Το δεύτερο σχέδιο αφορά την Εφαρµογή Αυτοπαραγωγήσ µε Χρήση Φωτοβολταϊκών συστηµάτων σε Εµπορικέσ και Βιοµηχανικέσ Μονάδεσ, δυναµικÞτητασ 10 ΜW, άνευ χορηγίασ. Σύµφωνα µε τα αναλυτικά στοιχεία που έδωσε η ΡΑΕΚ, για την υλοποίηση τησ εξαγγελίασ του υπουργού Ενέργειασ, Γιώργου Λακκοτρύπη, για προώθηση φωτοβολταϊκών συστηµάτων για τα νοικοκυριά, µε επιδÞτηση για ευπαθείσ οικογένειεσ, χωρίσ επιδÞτηση για τισ υπÞλοιπεσ, για κτήρια δηµοτικών και κοινοτικών Αρχών, Þπωσ και για αυτοπαραγωγή σε οικονοµικέσ µονάδεσ, µε τη µέθοδο του συµψηφισµού παραγωγήσ - κατανάλωσησ, θα δοθούν άδειεσ για συνολικÞ δυναµικÞ παραγωγήσ 15 MW για τα νοικοκυριά, 0,2 MW για τοπικέσ Αρχέσ και 10 MW για εµπορικέσ και βιοµηχανικέσ µονάδεσ. ∆ηλαδή, στισ µονάδεσ που θα εγκατασταθούν φωτοβολταϊκά µε το συγκεκριµένο σχέδιο, στο κάθε σπίτι θα υπάρχουν δύο µετρητέσ. Ο ένασ θα µετρά κανονικά την κατανάλωση τησ οικίασ και ο δεύτεροσ θα µετρά την παραγωγή του φωτοβολταϊκού συστήµατοσ, που θα διοχετεύεται στο δίκτυο. Τέλοσ κάθε διµήνου, Þπωσ και τώρα, η ΑΗΚ θα µετρά πÞσεσ κιλοβατώρεσ κατανάλωσε η οικία, πÞσεσ παρήγαγε, θα υπολογίζει τη διαφορά και ανάλογα θα χρεώνει το νοικοκυριÞ ή και θα του επιστρέφει λεφτά. Οποιεσδήποτε διαφορέσ λογιστικά θα πρέπει να ξεκαθαρίζουν πλήρωσ στο τέλοσ κάθε χρÞ-

νου. ΑπÞ τα 15 ΜW για νοικοκυριά, τα 6 MW αφορούν σε νοικοκυριά ευάλωτων οικογενειών και θα επιδοτηθούν µε 900 ευρώ ανά κιλοβάτ εγκατεστηµένησ ισχύοσ. ∆εδοµένου Þτι κάθε εγκατάσταση δεν µπορεί να ξεπερνά τα 3 κιλοβάτ, η µέγιστη επιχορήγηση θα είναι 2.700 ευρώ. Ùπωσ προκύπτει το µέσο συνολικÞ κÞστοσ µιασ τέτοιασ εγκατάστασησ κυµαίνεται στισ 3.900 ευρώ, δηλαδή η χορηγία είναι τησ τάξησ του 70% του κÞστουσ. Οι αιτητέσ, για τα επιχορηγηµένα φωτοβολταϊκά, θα πρέπει να δείξουν Þτι είναι ιδιοκτήτεσ τησ οικίασ και πωσ αυτή είναι η µÞνιµή τουσ κατοικία. Θα πρέπει να εξασφαλίσουν και έγκριση για τη χορηγία απÞ το Ίδρυµα Ενέργειασ, ενώ οι αιτήσεισ θα πρέπει να υποβάλλονται στα κατά τÞπουσ Περιφερειακά Γραφεία τησ ΑΗΚ υπÞ την ιδιÞτητά τησ ωσ ∆ιαχειριστή Συστήµατοσ ∆ιανοµήσ, σε ειδικÞ έντυπο που ήδη έχει ετοιµαστεί και βρίσκεται στισ ιστοσελίδεσ τησ ΑΗΚ, τησ ΡΑΕΚ και του Ιδρύµατοσ Ενέργειασ. Ιδιοκτήτεσ των υποστατικών θα πρέπει να είναι επίσησ οι αιτητέσ για τη µη χορηγηµένη άδεια εγκατάστασησ φωτοβολταϊκού - επίσησ µέγιστησ ισχύοσ 3 κιλοβάτ χωρίσ χορηγία. Σε Þλεσ τισ περιπτώσεισ, το σύστηµα θα πρέπει να εγκατασταθεί είτε στη στέγη του σπιτικού, είτε στην αυλή του και Þχι σε άλλο χώρο, ενώ σε περιπτώσεισ πολυκατοικιών θα πρέπει για την εγκατάσταση φωτοβολταϊκού στην ταράτσα, να εξασφαλίσει έγκριση απ’ Þλουσ τουσ ιδιοκτήτεσ τησ πολυκατοικίασ. Και στισ οικίεσ αν οι ιδιοκτήτεσ είναι περισσÞτεροι απÞ ένασ, θα πρέπει Þλοι να συναινούν. Το σχέδιο δεν καλύπτει οικίεσ που θα κατασκευαστούν απÞ τούδε και στο εξήσ, αλλά µÞνο υπάρχουσεσ.

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

10 ΙΟΥΛΙΟΥ, 2013

financialmirror.com | ΕΙ∆ΗΣΕΙΣ | 3

¶¿„ÂÙ ӷ ÔÓÂÈÚ‡ÂÛÙ ∞ÓÙÒÓ˘ §Ô˚˙Ô˘ ∞ÓÙÒÓ˘ §Ô›˙Ô˘ F.R.I.C.S. & ™˘ÓÂÚÁ¿Ù˜ §Ù‰, ∂ÎÙÈÌËÙ¤˜ ∞ÎÈÓ‹ÙˆÓ & ¢È·¯ÂÈÚÈÛÙ¤˜ ŒÚÁˆÓ ∞Ó¿Ù˘Í˘

Η κατασκευή ενÞσ πρωτοποριακού Μουσείου στην Λευκωσία είναι ασφαλώσ απÞ τισ προτεραιÞτητεσ τησ Κύπρου και θα προσφέρει τα µέγιστα στην Λευκωσία και στον πολιτισµÞ (Þµωσ εντÞσ των οικονοµικών δυνατοτήτων του Κράτουσ). Ένα µουσείο που να λειτουργεί στα πρÞτυπα τησ Βρετανίασ, ίσωσ να είναι µια καλή προσέγγιση.Το µουσείο εκεί (Η.Β.) ενοικιάζει αίθουσεσ για οτιδήποτε, απÞ συνέδρια και γάµουσ, µέχρι Þλων των ειδών εκδηλώσεισ, ενώ εισ µια πρÞσθετη προσπάθεια να έχουν και πρÞσθετα εισοδήµατα, διαθέτει πιστά αντίγραφα διάφορων έργων τέχνησ, ιδιαίτερεσ ξεναγήσεισ επί πληρωµή, για τουσ δωρητέσ, ειδικέσ αίθουσεσ και πλακέτεσ για αναγνώριση δωρητών και τÞσα άλλα. ∆εν έχουµε ωσ πολιτεία χρήµατα και ξαφνικά στραφήκαµε Þλοι µασ το σύστηµα Β.Ο.Τ. ∆ηλαδή να βρεθεί κάποιοσ επενδυτήσ που θα ανεγείρει το µουσείο, θα το διαχειριστεί απÞ πλευράσ εισοδήµατοσ και µετά να το επιστρέψει πίσω το Κράτοσ µε περίοδο (που κατά τα δηµοσιεύµατα καθορίστηκε) 25 ετών. ∆ιερωτώµαστε αγαπητοί µασ αναγνώστεσ εάν αυτού του είδουσ οι ανακοινώσεισ πηγάζουν απÞ κάποιου είδουσ οικονοµικέσ µελέτεσ. ΠαρÞµοιεσ ανακοινώσεισ έγιναν για το Γ.Σ.Π. (το παλιÞ) και τον χώρο τησ ∆ιεθνούσ Έκθεσησ, για Κυβερνητικά γραφεία και άλλα. ∆ιερωτÞµαστε εάν είµαστε 100% σοβαροί, διÞτι για εµάσ που ασχολούµαστε µε τισ επενδύσεισ ακινήτων, εκ πρώτησ Þψησ αυτού του είδουσ οι επενδύσεισ δεν συµφέρουν στον ιδιωτικÞ τοµέα. Υποβάλαµε τÞτε στον ∆ήµο Λευκωσίασ Þτι το Β.Ο.Τ. Þπωσ προδιαγραφÞταν για το Γ.Σ.Π. (χωρίσ καµία οικονοµική ανάλυση) δεν ήταν βιώσιµο και υποβάλαµε και οικονοµικέσ αναλύσεισ που αποδείκνυαν την λανθασµένη πρÞταση τησ ανάπτυξησ. ∆εν µασ άκουσε το Κράτοσ/∆ήµοσ, προκήρυξε προσφορέσ, έδωσε βραβεία κλπ, µε κÞστοσ στο Κράτοσ 500.000 ευρώ και στο τέλοσ δεν υπήρξε ούτε ένασ ενδιαφερÞµενοσ (και Þλα αυτά πριν τον 3/2013/κούρεµα). Έγινε και νέα οικονοµική µελέτη αυτή τη φορά για να ξανά-ζητηθούν προσφορέσ (άγνωστο που υπάρχει αυτή η µελέτη για σχολιασµÞ) και αυτή τη φορά προστέθηκε και η παραχώρηση συντελεστή δÞµησησ στον ενδιαφερÞµενο που θα µπορούσε να τον µεταφέρει σε άλλα τεµάχια του, ωσ ενθάρρυνση τησ επένδυσησ αυτήσ (το ίδιο για το µουσείο). Και Þµωσ δεν υπάρχουν χρήµατα αγαπητοί µασ αναγνώστεσ, ούτε στον ιδιωτικÞ τοµέα, ούτε στισ τράπεζεσ, έστω και εάν οι τελευταίεσ θέλουν να παραχωρήσουν δάνεια. ∆εν υπάρχουν ούτε αγοραστέσ/ενοικιαστέσ για το τελικÞ προϊÞν τησ ανάπτυξησ, ενώ υπάρχουν χιλιάδεσ τ.µ. σε συντελεστή δÞµησησ προσ αγορά (µÞνο 1 εκ. τ.µ. απÞ Ακάµα και περιοχέσ Νατούρα). Που θα κτίσει ο άµοιροσ αυτÞσ επενδυτήσ τα χιλιάδεσ τετραγωνικά µέτρα του δωρεάν συντελεστή δÞµησησ που θα του τα παραχωρήσει το Κράτοσ (εκτÞσ του χώρου του π.χ. µουσείου) και πoιÞσ θα αγοράσει αυτά τα τ.µ.; Πρέπει να µάθουµε Þτι δεν είµαστε µÞνοι µασ στον κÞσµο. Υπάρχει έλλειψη χρηµατοδÞτησησ παντού και εκείνοσ που διαθέτει το ανάλογο χρήµα ζητά ψηλέσ αποδÞσεισ, ιδιαίτερα υπÞ τισ επικρατούσεσ καταστάσεισ µιασ θλιβερήσ οικονοµίασ µε τάσησ χειροτέρευσησ και αβέβαιο µέλλον Þπωσ η Κύπροσ. Για να έχουµε κάποιου είδουσ πιθανήσ επιτυχίασ, δυστυχώσ, για το νέο µασ µουσείο θα πρέπει να υπάρχουν Κυβερνητικά χρήµατα, δωρητέσ και ενίσχυση απÞ την Ε. Ένωση, για να µπορέσει αυτÞ το έργο να εκτελεστεί (πλέον του Β.Ο.Τ.). Ùλα τα µικρο-µουσεία απÞ τισ αγιογραφίεσ τησ Αρχιεπισκοπήσ µέχρι το Λεβέντειο, οικοτεχνία/χειροτεχνία, εκείνο τησ ΕΟΚΑ και άλλα πιστεύουµε Þτι θα πρέπει να συγχωνευθούν Þλα µαζί σε ένα µουσείο, ούτωσ ώστε ένασ επισκέπτησ σε µια τοποθεσία, να µελετά Þλη την Κυπριακή ιστορία. Τα υφιστάµενα κτίρια εάν εγκαταλειφθούν απÞ τα υπάρχοντα µουσεία να διατεθούν στην αγορά προσ πώληση, εισ µια προσπάθεια συλλογήσ χρηµάτων ή την χρήση των απÞ Κυβερνητικέσ υπηρεσίεσ. ΕπανερχÞµενοι σε ξένουσ επενδυτέσ, Þπωσ έχουν σήµερα τα δεδοµένα, ξένα ταµεία µεγέθουσ ζητούν µια απÞδοση τησ τάξησ του 7%-9% επί τησ επένδυσησ τουσ και µε καθορισµένη έξοδο (exit route) απÞ αυτήν, ούτωσ ώστε ο επενδυτήσ να µην είναι εγκλωβισµένοσ για τÞση χρονική περίοδο (25 χρÞνια) και να µπορεί να διαθέτει την επένδυση του. ∆υστυχώσ ταµεία Þπωσ ΣΥΤΑ, ΑΗΚ, Ξενοδοχοϋπαλλήλων µε εκατοµµύρια καταθέσεισ δεν υπάρχουν πλέον για να βοηθήσουν και αυτά υπÞ την µορφή τησ χρηµατοδÞτησησ/επένδυσησ. ∆εν έχουµε ελπίδα αγαπητοί µασ αναγνώστεσ ούτε για το Μουσείο, ούτε για το ΓΣΠ και ούτε για την ∆ιεθνή Έκθεση και Þποιοσ πιστεύει Þτι η λύση είναι η µέθοδοσ του Β.Ο.Τ. για τέτοια έργα (Þχι εµπορικά) αυτήν την περίοδο, έχει λάθοσ πληροφÞρηση. Σε αντίθεση π.χ. για εµπορικά έργα Þπωσ π.χ.

καζίνο κλπ το θέµα είναι τελείωσ διαφορετικÞ. Υπήρχε ένα ταµείο για το µουσείο Λευκωσίασ ?40 εκ., που προερχÞταν απÞ κάποιου είδουσ φορολογία απÞ στοιχήµατα, το οποίο ταµείο Þµωσ τώρα δεν υπάρχει. Εάν υποθέσουµε Þτι το νέο µουσείο θα κοστίσει τουλάχιστον ?100 εκ. ίσωσ να επανα-εισάξουµε την πιο πάνω φορολογία, την προσέλκυση ξένων/ιδιωτών δωρητών ανεξάρτητα ύψουσ, καθορισµÞ ειδικών αιθουσών εκθέσεων για τουσ µεγάλουσ δωρητέσ κλπ. Στο τέλοσ θα πρέπει να έχουµε υπÞψη µασ Þτι ο επενδυτήσ θα πρέπει να ανακτήσει την επένδυση του και την απÞδοση του. Εάν επιµένουµε, εκ µέρουσ µασ, σε παράλογα ψηλέσ χρεώσεισ εισÞδου στο µουσείο, τÞτε δεν θα υπάρχουν επισκέπτεσ στο µουσείο που είναι το αντίθετο που χρειαζÞµαστε, ενώ σε χαµηλά επίπεδα δεν θα συµφέρει στον επενδυτή. Πριν λοιπÞν να γίνουν ανακοινώσεισ θα πρέπει να προηγηθεί µια τεχνο-οικονοµική µελέτη που να υποδεικνύει την χρονική διάρκεια κατοχήσ του έργου απÞ τον επενδυτή, τισ χρε-

ώσεισ και τα αναµενÞµενα εισοδήµατα απÞ την επένδυση αυτή και τα κίνητρα που θα του προσφερθούν (φορολογικά και άλλα). Χωρίσ αυτή την βάση θα παραµείνει το µουσείο µασ ένα Þνειρο που θα µείνει στα χαρτιά.

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

10 ΙΟΥΛΙΟΥ, 2013

4 | ΕΙ∆ΗΣΕΙΣ | financialmirror.com

¡¤Ô ÌÔÓÙ¤ÏÔ ÂÔÙ›·˜ ÙˆÓ ™˘ÓÂÚÁ·ÙÈÎÒÓ Νοµοσχέδια που αφορούν αλλαγέσ στην εποπτεία των Συνεργατικών Πιστωτικών Ιδρυµάτων, ώστε η πρωτοβάθµια εποπτεία να µεταφερθεί στην Κεντρική Τράπεζα τησ Κύπρου που θα µπορεί πλέον να ασκεί άµεσα εποπτικÞ ρÞλο στα 90 περίπου συνεργατικά πιστωτικά ιδρύµατα, κατατέθηκαν µε σηµαντική καθυστέρηση στη Βουλή Τα νοµοσχέδια που εγκρίθηκαν απÞ το ΥπουργικÞ Συµβούλιο, προνοούν την µεταφορά τησ εποπτείασ των ΣΠΙ στην Κεντρική Τράπεζα Þπωσ προβλέπεται στο µνηµÞνιο που υπέγραψε η Κύπροσ µε την ΤρÞικα και οι τροποποιήσεισ θα έπρεπε να είχαν γίνει το Μάιο του 2013. Είναι φανερÞ πωσ σηµειώνονται µεγάλεσ καθυστερήσεισ στην εφαρµογή Þσων δεσµεύτηκε να εφαρµÞσει η Κύπροσ. Με βάση τα νοµοσχέδια η Κεντρική Τράπεζα τησ Κύπρου µπορεί να εκδίδει

δεσµευτικέσ οδηγίεσ προσ την Υπηρεσία Εποπτείασ Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών για σκοπούσ λήψησ εποπτικών µέτρων στα συνεργατικά πιστωτικά ιδρύµατα. Προηγουµένωσ, πρωτοβάθµια εποπτεία ασκούσε η ίδια η Υπηρεσία. Τα προτεινÞµενα Νοµοσχέδια έχουν τίτλο «ο περί Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών (ΤροποποιητικÞσ) (Αρ. 3) ΝÞµοσ του 2013» και «ο περί Τραπεζικών Εργασιών (ΤροποποιητικÞσ) (Αρ. 2) ΝÞµοσ του 2013» Σύµφωνα µε τισ πρÞνοιεσ των νοµοσχεδίων, θα παρέχονται στην ΚΤ απÞ την Υπηρεσία Εποπτείασ Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών Þλα τα αναγκαία στοιχεία και πληροφορίεσ που αφορούν τα συνεργατικά πιστωτικά ιδρύµατα που λειτουργούν δυνάµει του περί Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών ΝÞµου, για σκοπούσ διασφάλισησ τησ σταθερÞτητασ του χρηµατοοικονοµικού συστήµατοσ, νοµι-

σµατοπιστωτικήσ πολιτικήσ, παρακολούθησησ του ισοζυγίου πληρωµών και πληροφÞρησησ τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Κεντρικήσ Τράπεζασ ή διεθνούσ οργανισµού στον οποίο συµµετέχει η ∆ηµοκρατία. Η Κεντρική Τράπεζα θα µπορεί να διεξάγει, απÞ κοινού µε την Υπηρεσία, επί τÞπου επαλήθευση στα συνεργατικά πιστωτικά ιδρύµατα. Σε περίπτωση που η Κεντρική Τράπεζα, κατά την εξέταση των στοιχείων και πληροφοριών που τησ παρέχονται, διαπιστώσει Þτι η κεφαλαιακή επάρκεια, η ρευστÞτητα και η αξία των στοιχείων του ενεργητικού συνεργατικού πιστωτικού ιδρύµατοσ έχουν αλλοιωθεί ή επηρεαστεί δυσµενώσ ή υφίσταται κίνδυνοσ να αλλοιωθούν ή επηρεαστούν δυσµενώσ ή υφίσταται κίνδυνοσ να ελαττωθεί η ικανÞτητα του συνεργατικού πιστωτικού ιδρύµατοσ για έγκαιρη αντιµετώπιση των υποχρεώσεών του έναντι των καταθετών ή πιστωτών

∞ÔχÛÂȘ Î·È ÛÙ· ∆·¯˘‰ÚÔÌ›·; ΕναρµονιστικÞ νοµοσχέδιο µε στÞχο την πλήρη απελευθέρωση τησ αγοράσ ταχυδροµικών υπηρεσιών, συζήτησε η Κοινοβουλευτική Επιτροπή Συγκοινωνιών. Το νοµοσχέδιο Þµωσ δεν θα τεθεί στην τελευταία Ολοµέλεια στισ 11 του µήνα και θα συνεχιστεί η συζήτηση τον Σεπτέµβριο, καθώσ εκκρεµούν κάποια θέµατα µεταξύ του Ρυθµιστή ηλεκτρονικών επικοινωνιών και ταχυδροµικών υπηρεσιών και του Υπουργείου Συγκοινωνιών. Σύµφωνα µε τον ΠρÞεδρο τησ Κοινοβουλευτικήσ Επιτροπήσ Αντώνη Αντωνίου, θα υπάρξουν επιπτώσεισ στα ταχυδροµεία και υπάρχουν ανησυχίεσ για απολύσεισ και για το λÞγο αυτÞ το θέµα δεν θα προωθηθεί στην Ολοµέλεια στισ 11 Ιουλίου, αλλά θα συνεχίσει η συζήτηση τον Σεπτέµβριο, Þταν δοθούν

διευκρινίσεισ γιατί ακÞµη είναι σε εξέλιξη συζητήσεισ µεταξύ του Ρυθµιστή και του Υπουργείου Συγκοινωνιών. Το νοµοσχέδιο προνοεί ρυθµίσεισ που προβλέπουν κατάργηση τησ υπηρεσίασ αποκλειστικά απÞ τα κυπριακά ταχυδροµεία και την παραχώρηση του δικαιώµατοσ παροχήσ υπηρεσιών και σε άλλουσ παρÞχουσ µε διαδικασία αδειοδÞτησησ. Οι παροχείσ µε την αδειοδÞτηση θα έχουν την επιλογή να µην έχουν καθολική υπηρεσία σε ολÞκληρη την Κύπρο αν αυτή είναι ασύµφορη και για το λÞγο αυτÞ θα γίνει ανάθεση στα κυπριακά ταχυδροµεία για µια µεταβατική περίοδο 15 χρÞνων, ωσ το 2028. Με την αδειοδÞτηση θα υπάρξει αναπÞφευκτα µείωση του κÞστουσ των υπηρεσιών και Þτι σε περίπτωση που υπάρξει αισχροκέρδεια θα παρεµβαίνει ο Ρυθµιστήσ.

του ή κρίνεται αναγκαίο να ληφθούν µέτρα για εξασφάλιση των συµφερÞντων των καταθετών ή πιστωτών του, ή συνεργατικÞ πιστωτικÞ ίδρυµα δεν συµµορφώνεται µε οποιαδήποτε απÞ τισ υποχρεώσεισ του, η Κεντρική Τράπεζα, δύναται να εκδίδει δεσµευτικέσ οδηγίεσ προσ τον Έφορο τησ Υπηρεσίασ για τη λήψη, εντÞσ καθορισµένησ προθεσµίασ που δύναται η Κεντρική Τράπεζα να αποφασίζει, Þλων ή οποιωνδήποτε απÞ τα µέτρα που αναφέρονται στα άρθρα 41Ε και 41ΣΤ του περί Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών ΝÞµου ή σε απÞφαση, διάταγµα, ΘεσµÞ ή οδηγία, που εκδίδεται ή καθίσταται εφαρµοστέα δυνάµει του άρθρου 15Α, 41Ζ ή 41Ι του περί Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών ΝÞµου. Η κυβέρνηση επιδιώκει την ψήφιση των νοµοσχεδίων πριν την άφιξη τησ τρÞικασ για την πρώτη αξιολÞγηση τησ Κύπρου στισ 17 Ιουλίου.

¶ÚÔÛÊÔÚ¤˜ Ó·‡ÏˆÓ ·fi ÙȘ ∫.∞ Μειώσεισ στα ναύλα των πτήσεων τουσ κατά 30% σε 15 ελκυστικούσ προορισµούσ τησ Ευρώπησ και Μέσησ Ανατολήσ, απÞ το Σεπτέµβριο µέχρι το τέλοσ του 2013 για ταξίδια µετ’ επιστροφήσ που ξεκινούν απÞ την Κύπρο, ανακοίνωσαν οι Κυπριακέσ Αερογραµµέσ. Η προσφορά ισχύ για κρατήσεισ µέχρι τη ∆ευτέρα 15 Ιουλίου, µε τελευταία ηµέρα έκδοσησ τη 15η Ιουλίου 2013, για ταξίδια τα οποία θα αρχίζουν απÞ την 1η Σεπτεµβρίου και θα µπορούν να ολοκληρώνονται µέχρι τισ 31 ∆εκεµβρίου 2013 µε σηµείο αναχώρησησ το ΑεροδρÞµιο Λάρνακασ. H προσφορά είναι για ναύλουσ µετ’ επιστροφήσ και ισχύει για τουσ ακÞλουθουσ δεκαπέντε προορισµούσ: Αθήνα, Θεσσαλονίκη, Λονδίνο (Heathrow) Παρίσι, Ρώµη, ΣÞφια, Φραγκφούρτη, ΜÞναχο, Ζυρίχη, Άµστερνταµ, ΜÞσχα, Ηράκλειο, Βιέννη, Τελ Αβίβ και ΒηρυτÞ. Οι ενδιαφερÞµενοι επιβάτεσ µπορούν να απευθύνονται στο τηλέφωνο 80000008, στα κατά τÞπουσ γραφεία ή µέσω τησ ιστοσελίδασ cyprusair.com. Επίσησ µπορούν να απευθύνονται στα ταξιδιωτικά γραφεία και τουσ ταξιδιωτικούσ πράκτορεσ.

™Â 6 Ì‹Ó˜ Ë ÂÊ·ÚÌÔÁ‹ Ù˘ ∂ÓÈ·›·˜ ∞ÁÔÚ¿˜ ∂Ó¤ÚÁÂÈ·˜ Η στρατηγική, οι πολιτικέσ και µέτρα για την εξοικονÞµηση ενέργειασ, στο πλαίσιο τησ εφαρµογήσ απÞ την 1η Ιανουαρίου 2014 τησ Ενιαίασ Αγοράσ Ενέργειασ ήταν το κεντρικÞ θέµα ηµερίδασ που πραγµατοποιήθηκε σήµερα στο Σπίτι τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Ένωσησ. Η ηµερίδα πραγµατοποιήθηκε στο πλαίσιο του Ευρωπαϊκού Έτουσ Πολιτών και σε αυτήν συζητήθηκε Þλο το φάσµα των ζητηµάτων αλλά και καθηµερινέσ εφαρµογέσ, Þσον αφορά τισ σύγχρονεσ πολιτικέσ και καινοτÞµεσ τεχνικέσ που θα βοηθήσουν τον καταναλωτή να κάνει αποφασιστική παρέµβαση στη ζήτηση, να ελέγξει την κατανάλω-

ση και να έχει πραγµατικέσ επιλογέσ για φθηνÞτερη ενέργεια. Σε χαιρετισµÞ του, ο ευρωβουλευτήσ Τάκησ Χατζηγεωργίου τÞνισε Þτι η βελτίωση τησ ενεργειακήσ απÞδοσησ, η καλύτερη αξιοποίηση ενέργειασ και ο µετριασµÞσ τησ σπατάλησ, οδηγούν στην εξοικονÞµηση ενέργειασ µε άµεσο οικονοµικÞ αλλά και έµµεσα περιβαλλοντικÞ αντίκτυπο. Ο πρÞεδροσ τησ ΡΑΕΚ Γιώργοσ Σιαµµάσ τÞνισε Þτι µε την εφαρµογή των νέων ευρωπαϊκών οδηγιών και έξυπνων τεχνολογιών ο καταναλωτήσ µπορεί να αποκτήσει ενισχυµένη δυνατÞτητα ελέγχου των ενεργειακών δαπανών του και επεσήµανε το ρÞλο τησ

Αρχήσ για διασφάλιση τησ διαφάνειασ και προσιτών τιµών στον καταναλωτή. Στην ανάγκη επενδύσεων απÞ τον ιδιωτικÞ τοµέα στισ ενεργειακέσ υποδοµέσ αναφέρθηκε ο ΓενικÞσ ∆ιευθυντήσ του Υπουργείου Εµπορίου, Βιοµηχανίασ, Ενέργειασ και Τουρισµού Γιώργοσ Χειµώνασ, σηµειώνοντασ παράλληλα Þτι η κυβέρνηση θα εφαρµÞσει συστηµατικά προγράµµατα στον τοµέα τησ εξοικονÞµησησ και των ανανεώσιµων πηγών µέσω των Ευρωπαϊκών Ταµείων 2014 – 2020. Στο πλαίσιο τησ ηµερίδασ παρουσιάστηκαν επίσησ το νέο νοµοθετικÞ πλαίσιο για την ενεργειακή απÞδοση των κτηρίων, οι

πολιτικέσ για τη βιώσιµη κινητικÞτητα για εξοικονÞµηση ενέργειασ στισ µεταφορέσ καθώσ και καλέσ πρακτικέσ στον τρÞπο εξοικονÞµησησ ενέργειασ στην καθηµερινÞτητα των πολιτών. Τέλοσ έγινε ειδική παρουσίαση για την αξιοποίηση των ευρωπαϊκών κονδυλίων στην Κύπρο καθώσ και το σχέδιο χορηγιών για ΑΠΕ και ΕΞΕ για το 2013. Την ηµερίδα διοργάνωσαν το Γραφείο του Ευρωπαϊκού Κοινοβουλίου, η Αντιπροσωπεία τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Επιτροπήσ και το Γραφείο Τύπου και Πληροφοριών σε συνεργασία µε το ΕνεργειακÞ Γραφείο Κυπρίων Πολιτών.

™¶∂ ™ÙÚÔ‚fiÏÔ˘: ¶ÈÛÙÔÔ›ËÛË ‰È·¯Â›ÚÈÛ˘ ·ÛÊ¿ÏÂÈ·˜ Î·È ˘Á›·˜

¶Ù˘¯È·Î¿ ÚÔÁÚ¿ÌÌ·Ù· ·fi ∂˘Úˆ·˚Îfi Î·È ∞ÚÈÛÙÔÙ¤ÏÂÈÔ ¶·ÓÂÈÛÙ‹ÌÈÔ

Πιστοποίηση Συστήµατοσ ∆ιαχείρισησ Ασφάλειασ και Υγείασ στην Εργασία σύµφωνα µε το πρÞτυπο OHSAS 18001, πέτυχε η

Σε συµφωνία συνεργασίασ κατέληξαν το ΕυρωπαϊκÞ Πανεπιστήµιο Κύπρου (ΕΠΚ) και του Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήµιο (ΑΠΘ). ΠρÞκειται για µια καινοτÞµο σε πρÞνοιεσ συµφωνία συνεργασίασ, µε έναν απÞ τουσ πιο διακεκριµένουσ παγκοσµίωσ εκπαιδευτικούσ οργανισµούσ στην τριτοβάθµια εκπαίδευση, καθÞτι το Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήµιο συγκαταλέγεται µεταξύ των 500 κορυφαίων ακαδηµαικών ιδρυµάτων του κÞσµου. Για τα δύο ιδρύµατα, η εν λÞγω διαπανεπιστηµιακή συνεργασία είναι στρατηγικήσ σηµασίασ καθÞτι δηµιουργεί τουσ κατάλληλουσ Þρουσ αλλά την καλύτερη προϋπÞθεση για µια ενισχυµένη διασύνδεση σε ευρωπαϊκÞ επίπεδο. ΤαυτÞχρονα, αποτελεί και το κλειδί επιτυχίασ µε στρατηγικÞ άξονα τα δύο ιδρύµατα µαζί να προετοιµασθούν συστηµατικά και µεθοδικά, συµβάλλοντασ µε καινοτÞµα προγράµµατα σπουδών και έρευνασ στο νέο εκπαιδευτικÞ γίγνεσθαι τÞσο τησ Ελλάδασ και τησ Κύπρου Þσο και τησ Ευρώπησ. Σε αυτÞ το πλαίσιο, στÞχοσ τησ συνεργα-

Σ.Π.Ε. ΣτροβÞλου. Η Επιθεώρηση Πιστοποίησησ του συστήµατοσ ∆ιαχείρισησ Ασφάλειασ και Υγείασ πραγµατοποιήθηκε απÞ το φορέα TUV CYPRUS µέλοσ του διεθνούσ οργανισµού επιθεώρησησ και πιστοποίησησ TUV NORD Γερµανίασ. «Τρία χρÞνια µετά την επιτυχή πιστοποίηση και εφαρµογή Συστήµατοσ ∆ιαχείρισησ τησ ΠοιÞτητασ ISO 9001, είµαστε ιδιαίτερα περήφανοι και για τη νέα αυτή τιµητική διάκριση η οποία τοποθετεί τη ΣΠΕ ΣτροβÞλου Λτδ στην πρωτοπορία ωσ το µÞνο χρηµατοπιστωτικÞ οργανισµÞ που έχει πιστοποιήσει το σύνολο των εργασιών αλλά και των εγκαταστάσεων µασ µε βάση τα πρÞτυπα ISO 9001 και OHSAS 18001.» τÞνισε ο ∆ηµήτρησ Σταύρου, ∆ιευθυντήσ τησ ΣΠΕ ΣτροβÞλου. Στην φωτογραφία ο Κωνσταντίνοσ Λύρασ, Έφοροσ Υπηρεσίεσ Εποπτείασ και Ανάπτυξησ Συνεργατικών Εταιρειών δίνει το πιστοποιητικÞ στον ∆ηµήτρη Σταύρου, ∆ιευθυντή τησ ΣΠΕ ΣτροβÞλου

σίασ είναι, µεταξύ άλλων, η απÞ κοινού δηµιουργία ισχυρών και ανταγωνιστικών ερευνητικών και εκπαιδευτικών οµάδων για την περαιτέρω ανάπτυξη τησ έρευνασ και διδασκαλίασ στουσ κοινούσ τοµείσ ενδιαφέροντοσ Þπωσ και η διεκδίκηση µελλοντικών χρηµατοδοτήσεων σε ΕθνικÞ και ΕυρωπαϊκÞ επίπεδο. Επιπλέον στÞχοσ είναι η απÞ κοινού δηµιουργία πτυχιακών και, κυρίωσ, µεταπτυχιακών προγραµµάτων, συµπεριλαµβανοµένων των «εξ αποστάσεωσ».

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

10 ΙΟΥΛΙΟΥ, 2013

financialmirror.com | ΕΙ∆ΗΣΕΙΣ | 5

AÁˆÁ‹ ηٿ §·˚΋˜ ·fi √ÚÊ·Ó›‰Ë Πέραν των 2 δισ ευρώ διεκδικεί η ∆ηµÞσια Εταιρεία «Ορφανίδησ Λτδ» µέσω αγωγήσ που καταχώρησε στο ΕπαρχιακÞ ∆ικαστήριο Λευκωσίασ κατά τησ Λαϊκήσ Τράπεζασ και Μελών του ∆.Σ σε σχέση µε θέµατα που αφορούν δανειοδοτήσεισ τησ Εταιρείασ απÞ την Λαϊκή, συµβουλέσ για διαχείριση τησ την περίοδο 2011 – 2013 και για παράβαση των υποχρεώσεων τησ Λαϊκήσ την περίοδο αυτή. Στην αγωγή συµπεριελήφθη και η Τράπεζα Κύπρου διάδοχοσ των υποθέσεων τησ Λαϊκήσ. Το ποσÞν αφορά απώλεια

εισοδηµάτων για τα επÞµενα χρÞνια. Παράλληλα η ∆ηµÞσια Εταιρεία Ορφανίδησ Λτδ καταχώρησε αγωγή κατά τησ Λαϊκήσ και άλλων συµπεριλαµβανοµένων τησ Κεντρικήσ Τράπεζασ και Επιτροπήσ Κεφαλαιαγοράσ σε σχέση µε τα αξιÞγραφα 2011 τα οποία η Λαϊκή Τράπεζα κατά τουσ ισχυρισµούσ τησ Εταιρείασ «επέβαλε» σ’ αυτή εισ ζηµία τησ και απώλεια τησ τάξησ των 9 εκ. ευρώ. Την αγωγή καταχώρησε το ∆ικηγορικÞ Γραφείο Φοίβοσ, Χρίστοσ Κληρίδησ & Συνεργάτεσ ∆.Ε.Π.Ε.

ºÚ¤ÓÔ ÛÙÔ˘˜ ÂÚ¿ÓÔ˘˜ Tο θέµα τησ διενέργειασ εράνων, τησ πώλησησ λαχείων αλλά και τησ επαιτείασ είναι ένα πολύ σοβαρÞ θέµα για την κυπριακή κοινωνία. Για τον λÞγο αυτÞ η κυβέρνηση προωθεί νοµοσχέδιο που θα ρυθµίζει τη διενέργεια εράνων, και το οποίο βρίσκεται ενώπιον τησ Νοµικήσ Υπηρεσίασ για νοµοτεχνικÞ έλεγχο. Το νοµοσχέδιο ρυθµίζει τον κατ’ οίκον έρανο, προνοεί παροχή κατάστασησ εσÞδων και εξÞδων, προνοεί Þτι αν τα έσοδα του εράνου είναι περισσÞτερα απÞ τισ ανάγκεσ του οργανισµού που τον διενεργεί τÞτε µέροσ των εσÞδων θα παραχωρείται στο κράτοσ. Ζητήθηκε επίσησ η συµπερίληψη πρÞνοιασ στο νοµοσχέδιο µε βάση την οποία οι αρχέσ τησ τοπικήσ αυτοδιοίκησησ θα πρέπει να ενηµερώνονται έγκαιρα για την παραχώρηση άδειασ στον οποιοδήποτε οργανισµÞ για τη διενέργεια εράνου. ΑκÞµη θα πρέπει στα λαχεία των εράνων να αναγράφεται ο αριθµÞσ τηλεφώνου τησ οργάνωσησ Σύµφωνα µε στοιχεία στην επαρχία Λευκωσίασ έγιναν το 2012 συνολικά 67 καταγγελίεσ για αδικήµατα που αφορούν τη διενέργεια εράνων, 153 καταγγελίεσ για πλανοδιοπώληση χωρίσ άδεια (πώληση φυλλαδίων και περιοδικών) και 189 καταγγελίεσ για εκούσια παρεµπÞδιση ελεύθερησ διέλευσησ (φώτα τροχαίασ). Σύµφωνα µε τα ίδια στοιχεία, ο αριθµÞσ των καταγγελιών στην επαρχία Λευκωσίασ για το Α’ εξάµηνο του 2013 ανήλθε στισ 154 σε σύγκριση µε 216 την αντίστοιχη περίοδο του 2012.

ª¤¯ÚÈ ÙȘ 10 Ì.Ì Ù· ÙÔ˘ÚÈÛÙÈο ηٷÛÙ‹Ì·Ù· Ανοικτά µέχρι τισ 10 το βράδυ απÞ ∆ευτέρα µέχρι Σάββατο και µέχρι τισ 9 το βράδυ τισ Κυριακέσ θα µπορούν να παραµένουν απÞ τισ 21 Ιουλίου τα καταστήµατα στισ περιοχέσ στισ οποίεσ εφαρµÞζεται τουριστικÞ ωράριο, σύµφωνα µε ανακοίνωση του Υπουργείου Εργασίασ και Κοινωνικών Ασφαλίσεων. Το µέτρο θα λειτουργεί εθελοντικά, υπÞ την έννοια Þτι ο κάθε επιχειρηµατίασ θα µπορεί να αποφασίσει τισ µέρεσ και ώρεσ λειτουργίασ του καταστήµατοσ του και στÞχοσ είναι Þπωσ αρθούν περιορισµοί, οι οποίοι στην παρούσα οικονοµική κρίση δεν βοηθούν στην τÞνωση τησ οικονοµίασ και να τυγχάνουν Þλα τα καταστήµατα ίσησ µεταχείρισησ, σύµφωνα µε το Υπουργείο.

™˘ÚÚ›ÎÓˆÛË ÙˆÓ ÂÈÛ·ÁˆÁÒÓ 380 ÂÎ. ηٿ €3 Μειωµένο κατά 448,2 εκ. ευρώ, στο 1,0 δισ ευρώ, ήταν το έλλειµµα του εµπορικού ισοζυγίου το πρώτο τετράµηνο του 2013, σε σύγκριση µε έλλειµµα 1,45 δισ ευρώ την αντίστοιχη περίοδο του 2012, λÞγω κυρίωσ τησ σηµαντικήσ συρρίκνωσησ των εισαγωγών κατά 380 εκ. ευρώ. Σύµφωνα µε τα στοιχεία που δηµοσιοποίησε η Στατιστική Υπηρεσία, οι συνολικέσ εισαγωγέσ/αφίξεισ αγαθών (συνολικέσ εισαγωγέσ απÞ Τρίτεσ Χώρεσ και αφίξεισ απÞ άλλα Κράτη Μέλη τησ ΕΕ) για την περίοδο Ιανουαρίου-Απριλίου 2013 ήταν 1,53 δισ ευρώ σε σύγκριση µε 1,91 δισ ευρώ την περίοδο Ιανουαρίου-Απριλίου 2012. Οι συνολικέσ εξαγωγέσ/αποστολέσ αγαθών (συνολικέσ εξαγωγέσ σε Τρίτεσ Χώρεσ και αποστολέσ σε άλλα Κράτη Μέλη τησ ΕΕ) την περίοδο Ιανουαρίου-Απριλίου 2013 ήταν 533,3 εκ. ευρώ σε σύγκριση µε 464,8 εκ. ευρώ την αντίστοιχη περίοδο του 2012. Κατά τον Απρίλιο του 2013, το έλλειµµα του εµπορικού ισοζυγίου περιορίστηκε στα 161,9 εκ. ευρώ, απÞ 261,9 εκ. ευρώ το Μάρτιο του ίδιου έτουσ και έλλειµµα 372,8 εκ. ευρώ τον Απρίλιο του 2012. Οι συνολικέσ εισαγωγέσ/αφίξεισ αγαθών (συνολικέσ εισαγωγέσ απÞ Τρίτεσ Χώρεσ και αφίξεισ απÞ άλλα Κράτη Μέλη τησ ΕΕ) ήταν 359,1 εκ. ευρώ.Οι συνολικέσ εξαγωγέσ/αποστολέσ αγαθών (συνολικέσ εξαγωγέσ σε Τρίτεσ Χώρεσ και αποστολέσ σε άλλα Κράτη Μέλη τησ ΕΕ), περιλαµβανοµένων των προµηθειών πλοίων και αεροπλάνων, το µήνα Απρίλιο 2013 ήταν 197,2 εκ. ευρώ. Οι συνολικέσ εξαγωγέσ/αποστολέσ εγχώριων παραγÞµενων προϊÞντων, περιλαµβανοµένων των προµηθειών πλοίων και αεροπλάνων, ήταν 70,6 εκ. ευρώ ενώ οι συνολικέσ εξαγωγέσ/αποστολέσ ξένων προϊÞντων, περιλαµβανοµένων των προµηθειών πλοίων και αεροπλάνων, ήταν 126,6 εκ. ευρώ.

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

10 IOYΛΙΟΥ, 2013

6 | EI∆ΗΣΕΙΣ | financialmirror.com

ª·˜ «ÛÎÔÙÒÓÂÈ» Ë ÔÏÈÙÈ΋ ÏÈÙfiÙËÙ·˜ Ù˘ ∂.∂ Κριτική στισ πολιτικέσ λιτÞτητασ που εφαρµÞζονται στην Ευρώπη, µε δραµατικά αποτελέσµατα σε κοινωνικÞ επίπεδο, ασκεί η έκθεση «ΚοινωνικÞσ απολογισµÞσ τησ ΕΕ για το 2012» που παρουσιάστηκε στισ Βρυξέλλεσ απÞ το ΕυρωπαϊκÞ ΚοινωνικÞ Παρατηρητήριο (OSE) και το ΕυρωπαϊκÞ Ινστιτούτο των Εργατικών Συνδικάτων (ETUI). «Τα ευρωπαϊκά Þργανα παρουσιάζονται Þλο και περισσÞτερο παρεµβατικά αλλά και σύµφωνα στην πολιτική, που πρέπει να ακολουθηθεί, παρά την ύπαρξη του λεγÞµενου δηµοκρατικού ελλείµµατοσ» δήλωσε ο συντονιστήσ τησ έκθεσησ Ντέιβιντ Νάταλι. ΣτÞχοσ τησ έκθεσησ, σύµφωνα µε τον ίδιο, είναι να καταδειχθεί πÞσο οι κακέσ επιλογέσ τησ ΕΕ που επιβλήθηκαν στα κράτη, έχουν τροφοδοτήσει την τροµακτική ανεργία στισ χώρεσ-µέλη τησ ΕΕ, ενισχύοντασ έτσι τη δυσπιστία των πολιτών έναντι των κοινοτικών οργάνων και θεσµών. «Οι αποφάσεισ ελήφθησαν εκτÞσ κάθε πλαισίου κοινωνικού διαλÞγου, σε χώρεσ Þπωσ η Ελλάδα και η Ισπανία µε αποτέλεσµα Þλα τα κοινωνικά και εργασιακά δικαιώµατα να έχουν σηµαντικά αποδυναµωθεί», υπογράµµισε ο κ. Nάταλι.

Ωσ αποτέλεσµα, η έκθεση διαπιστώνει µία συνεχή πτώση τησ εµπιστοσύνησ των πολιτών προσ τουσ θεσµούσ τησ ΕΕ απÞ τÞτε που ξεκίνησε η κρίση. «Σήµερα λιγÞτερο απÞ το ένα τρίτο των Ευρωπαίων πολιτών έχουν εµπιστοσύνη στην ΕΕ, ο δείκτησ εµπιστοσύνησ έχει µειωθεί κατά 20 µονάδεσ

σε σύγκριση µε το 2007» σηµείωσε ο ίδιοσ. Παρά ταύτα, η έκθεση παραθέτει και ορισµένεσ θετικέσ εξελίξεισ. Μεταξύ αυτών, είναι η επέµβαση τησ ΕΚΤ µέσω τησ αγοράσ οµολÞγων για τη στήριξη των κρατών καθώσ και η πρÞσφατη απÞφαση του Ευρωπαϊκού Συµβουλίου για την υιοθέτηση προγράµµα-

τοσ για την ανεργία των νέων ύψουσ 6 δισ ευρώ. Η έκθεση προτείνει για την έξοδο απÞ την κρίση, να αποφασίσουν οι ηγέτεσ την αύξηση του προϋπολογισµού τησ ΕΕ. Άλλο µέτρο που εισηγείται είναι η διεύρυνση τησ αποστολήσ τησ ΕΚΤ, ώστε να µπορέσει να συµβάλει πιο ενεργά στην ενίσχυση τησ ανάπτυξησ. Ο Πάουλ ντε Γκράουε, ο οποίοσ περιλαµβάνεται στουσ συντάκτεσ τησ έκθεσησ, επιµένει ιδιαίτερα στην ανάγκη να υπάρξει µεταφορά πÞρων απÞ τισ χώρεσ που έχουν πλεÞνασµα στον προϋπολογισµÞ τουσ προσ τισ χώρεσ, που έχουν ελλείµµατα, ώστε να µειωθούν οι τεράστιεσ διαφορέσ ΒορράΝÞτου που προκάλεσε η κρίση. Τέλοσ, το δηµοσίευµα αναφέρει Þτι και οι ίδιοι οι συντάκτεσ τησ έκθεσησ έχουν συνειδητοποιήσει Þτι οι λύσεισ που προτείνουν έχουν ελάχιστεσ πιθανÞτητεσ να γίνουν αποδεκτέσ απÞ τα ευρωπαϊκά Þργανα. «Η κοινωνική Ευρώπη βρίσκεται σε µία κατάσταση καθαρήσ ήττασ και οπισθοχώρησησ. Και δεν πιστεύω Þτι οι επερχÞµενεσ εκλογέσ θα αλλάξουν τα δεδοµένα» προβλέπει ο Ντ. Νάταλι.

√√™∞: ∞ӷοÌÙÔ˘Ó ÔÈ ·Ó·Ù˘Á̤Ó˜ ÔÈÎÔÓƠ̂˜ Η οικονοµική δραστηριÞτητα στην ευρωζώνη µοιάζει να ανακτά εν µέρει σφρίγοσ, αλλά αυτÞ «δεν αντανακλάται» προσ το παρÞν στη Γαλλία, την δεύτερη µεγαλύτερη οικονοµία τησ, σύµφωνα µε τουσ σύνθετουσ δείκτεσ που δηµοσίευσε ο ΟργανισµÞσ Οικονοµικήσ Συνεργασίασ και Ανάπτυξησ (ΟΟΣΑ), που πάντωσ γενικÞτερα καταδεικνύουν Þτι η τάση Þσον αφορά την ανάπτυξη είναι σταθεροποιητική ή επιβραδυνÞµενη. Στην ευρωζώνη, η αναπτυξιακή προοπτική εµφανίζεται βελτιωµένη στην Ιταλία, ενώ στη Γερµανία επανέρχεται στα επίπεδα τησ τάσησ, αναφέρει ο διεθνήσ οικονοµικÞσ

οργανισµÞσ. Στο σύνολο των κρατών του ΟΟΣΑ, στον οποίο ανήκουν οι 34 πλουσιÞτερεσ χώρεσ του πλανήτη, η ανάπτυξη µοιάζει να ανακτά ορισµένη ορµή, σύµφωνα µε τουσ σύνθετουσ δείκτεσ αυτούσ, που είναι σχεδιασµένοι ώστε να προβλέπουν τα σηµεία καµπήσ σε σχέση µε τισ τάσεισ τησ οικονοµικήσ δραστηριÞτητασ. Στισ Ηνωµένεσ Πολιτείεσ και στην Ιαπωνία, οι δείκτεσ συνεχίζουν να καταδεικνύουν µια σταθεροποίηση τησ ανάπτυξησ, σύµφωνα µε την µηνιαία έκθεση του ΟΟΣΑ για τισ επιδÞσεισ των ανεπτυγµένων οικονοµιών. Η κατάσταση στη Βρετανία επανέρχεται στη σωστή κατεύθυν-

ση, αν και η χώρα αντιµετώπισε προβλήµατα εξαιτίασ των δηµοσιονοµικών περικοπών, ενώ το ίδιο συµβαίνει στον Καναδά, κατά τον ΟργανισµÞ. Μεταξύ των αναπτυσσÞµενων χωρών, οι οποίεσ δεν είναι µέλη του ΟΟΣΑ, η Κίνα αναµένεται να καταγράψει ανάπτυξη κοντά στον ρυθµÞ τησ τάσησ, ενώ στη Βραζιλία, αναµένεται η ανάπτυξη να επιταχυνθεί. Στην Ινδία, Þπου η καταγραφÞµενη δραστηριÞτητα ήταν κατώτερη τησ τάσησ, υπάρχουν ορισµένεσ ενδείξεισ βελτίωσησ, αναφέρει ο ΟΟΣΑ, ενώ αντιθέτωσ στη Ρωσία η ανάπτυξη µοιάζει να οδεύει προσ επιβράδυνση.

Swiss Re: ™Ù· €3,5 ‰È˜ ÙÔ ÎfiÛÙÔ˜ ·fi ÙȘ ÏËÌ̇Ú˜ Οι πληµµύρεσ οι οποίεσ έπληξαν την κεντρική Ευρώπη τον περασµένο µήνα αναµένεται να στοιχίσουν στισ ασφαλιστικέσ εταιρείεσ ζηµίεσ ύψουσ 3,5 ωσ 4,5 δισεκ. δολαρίων (3,5 δισεκ. ευρώ), ποσÞ που είναι σχεδÞν το υποδιπλάσιο σε σύγκριση µε µια προηγούµενη εκτίµηση αλλά µεγαλύτερο απÞ εκείνο που είχε καταβληθεί στισ προηγούµενεσ µείζονεσ πληµµύρεσ στην περιφέρεια το 2002, Þπωσ ανακοίνωσε η δεύτερη µεγαλύτερη αντασφαλιστική εταιρεία του κÞσµου.

Η πρÞβλεψη τησ Swiss Re κάνει λÞγο για ένα ποσÞ πολύ µικρÞτερο απÞ εκείνο στο οποίο είχε αναφερθεί AIR Worldwide, η οποία µελετά τισ επιπτώσεισ των φυσικών καταστροφών σε διεθνέσ επίπεδο. Αυτή προέβλεπε Þτι οι απαιτήσεισ έναντι των ασφαλιστικών εταιρειών λÞγω των ζηµιών απÞ τισ πληµµύρεσ θα ανέρχονταν σε έωσ και 8 δισ ευρώ µÞνο στη Γερµανία. Οι πληµµύρεσ ανάγκασαν τον τσεχικÞ στρατÞ να ανεγείρει µεταλλικά φράγµατα και σωρούσ απÞ σάκουσ µε

∂ÍÂÏ›ÍÂȘ ‰ÈÂıÓÒÓ ¯ÚËÌ·Ù·ÁÔÚÒÓ ∫˘ÚÈ¿ÎÔ˜ √ÚÂÈÓfi fi˜˜ Treasury Division, Alpha Bank (Cyprus) Ltd Ελαφρώσ υψηλÞτερα του χαµηλού ( $1,2806 ) επτά εβδοµάδων που κατέγραψε την Παρασκευή διαπραγµατεύεται στισ αρχέσ τησ τρέχουσασ εβδοµάδασ το ευρώ έναντι του δολαρίου. Θετικά επηρεάζεται το ευρώ απÞ τη διατήρηση τησ ενίσχυσησ τησ διάθεσησ για ανάληψη επενδυτικού κινδύνου, καθώσ η Ευρωπαϊκή Κεντρική Τράπεζα σηµατοδÞτησε τη διατήρηση τησ επεκτατικήσ τησ νοµισµατικήσ πολιτικήσ. Συγκεκριµένα, η ΕΚΤ αναµένει Þτι τα επιτÞκια τησ θα διατηρηθούν στα τρέχοντα ή χαµηλÞτερα επίπεδα για παρατεταµένη χρονική περίοδο. Η πιο πάνω προσδοκία βασίζεται στην υπÞθεση Þτι θα διατηρηθεί η προοπτική για υποτονικÞ πληθωρισµÞ σε µεσοπρÞθεσµο ορίζοντα, για αδύναµη οικονοµική δραστηριÞτητα και για υποτονική δυναµική νοµισµατικών µεγεθών. Ο ΠρÞεδροσ τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Κεντρικήσ Τράπεζασ ανέφερε επίσησ Þτι η απÞφαση του συµβουλίου για τη σηµατοδÞτηση τησ προοπτικήσ των επιτοκίων τησ ΕΚΤ ήταν οµÞφωνη και Þτι το συµβούλιο συζήτησε εκτενώσ το ενδεχÞµενο µείωσησ του επιτοκίου αναφοράσ, επισηµαίνοντασ Þτι το τρέχον επίπε-

δο του επιτοκίου (0,50%) δεν συνιστά το κατώτατο Þριο. Επανέλαβε, Þτι είναι πιθανÞ το ενδεχÞµενο υιοθέτησησ αρνητικού επιτοκίου αποδοχήσ καταθέσεων. Επιπλέον, σε ανακοίνωση του Eurogroup αναφέρεται Þτι το πρÞγραµµα οικονοµικήσ προσαρµογήσ τησ Ελλάδασ εξελίσσεται γενικά εντÞσ στÞχων, ενώ αναµένεται η εφαρµογή των προαπαιτουµένων ενεργειών σύντοµα. Στήριξη παρείχαν στο δολάριο τα ευνοϊκÞτερα των εκτιµήσεων στοιχεία για την αγορά εργασίασ που ανακοινώθηκαν στισ ΗΠΑ καθώσ οι νέεσ θέσεισ εργασίασ διαµορφώθηκαν τον Ιούνιο σε υψηλÞτερα απÞ τα αναµενÞµενα επίπεδα. Σηµειώνεται Þτι το ποσοστÞ ανεργίασ στισ ΗΠΑ διατηρήθηκε τον Ιούνιο στο 7.6% έναντι 6.5% που είναι ο µεσοπρÞθεσµοσ στÞχοσ τησ Κεντρικήσ Οµοσπονδιακήσ Τράπεζασ των ΗΠΑ (Fed). Συνολικά, κατά τουσ αναλυτέσ, τα στοιχεία εργασίασ τον Ιούνιο καταδεικνύουν διατήρηση τησ τάσησ ενίσχυσησ τησ απασχÞλησησ και σταδιακή αποκλιµάκωση τησ ανεργίασ. Το ενδιαφέρον τησ αγοράσ εστιάζεται την τρέχουσα εβδοµάδα στισ ανακοινώσεισ εταιρικών οικονοµικών αποτελεσµάτων στισ ΗΠΑ καθώσ και στην οµιλία του Προέδρου τησ Fed. Επιπλέον οι αναλυτέσ αναµένουν ενδείξεισ για την πορεία του προγράµµατοσ αγοράσ τίτλων απÞ τη Fed µέσα απÞ τη δηµοσίευση των πρακτικών τησ πρÞσφατησ σύσκεψησ τησ Fed.

άµµο για να προστατεύσει το ιστορικÞ κέντρο τησ Πράγασ έπειτα απÞ τισ πολυήµερεσ σφοδρέσ βροχοπτώσεισ που φούσκωσαν ποτάµια και ανάγκασαν χιλιάδεσ κατοίκουσ περιοχών σε χαµηλÞ υψÞµετρο να εγκαταλείψουν τισ εστίεσ τουσ. Στρατιώτεσ, εθελοντέσ και συνεργεία των υπηρεσιών πολιτικήσ προστασίασ εργάστηκαν ασταµάτητα για να βελτιώσουν τισ άµυνεσ έναντι των πληµµυρών κατά µήκοσ του ∆ούναβη και του Έλβα, ενώ η Γερµανία ήταν ανάµεσα στα κράτη που επλήγησαν περισσÞτερο.

∏ ÎÚ›ÛË ·ÁÁ›˙ÂÈ (ηÈ) ÙË °ÂÚÌ·Ó›· Μεγάλη υποχώρηση κατέγραψε τον Μάιο η βιοµηχανική παραγωγή στη Γερµανία. Ενώ ο µέσοσ Þροσ των προβλέψεων αναλυτών έκανε λÞγο για υποχώρηση 0,5% σε σχέση µε τον Απρίλιο, τελικά η «βουτιά» έφτασε το 1%. Στα τέλη τησ προηγούµενησ εβδοµάδασ ανακοινώθηκαν τα στοιχεία Μαΐου για το εµπορικÞ ισοζύγιο, τα οποία επίσησ απογοήτευσαν, καταγράφοντασ υποχώρηση των εξαγωγών 2,4% (οι αναλυτέσ προέβλεπαν 0,4%). Παρά τα αρνητικά στοιχεία, πάντωσ, ο δείκτησ DAX30 στη Φραγκφούρτη καταγράφει άνοδο µεγαλύτερη του 2% ενώ και το ευρώ εµφανίζεται ελαφρώσ ενισχυµένο σε σχέση µε την Παρασκευή, επιστρέφοντασ πάνω απÞ τα 1,285 δολ.

10 ΙΟΥΛΙΟΥ, 2013

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

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∏ ∂ÏÏ¿‰· Û ÎÚ›ÛË Î·È ÔÈ Ê·Û›ÛÙ˜ Û ¿ÓÔ‰Ô ∆εν χρειάζεται να πούµε ακÞµη «αντίο» στην Αθήνα, εκτιµά ο Τζον Ουίλτσαϊρ στο οµÞτιτλο θέµα τησ εφηµερίδασ Guardian. Η Ελλάδα είναι σε κρίση και οι φασίστεσ σε άνοδο, αλλά απέχουν πολύ απÞ το Βερολίνο του 1930. Η ακροδεξιά Χρυσή Αυγή έχει φτάσει στην τρίτη θέση των δηµοσκοπήσεων. Το κÞµµα που κατηγορείται για βίαιεσ και ενίοτε φονικέσ επιθέσεισ σε µετανάστεσ πολλοί δεν το είχαν ακούσει ποτέ. Οπωσ και µε τουσ νεοναζί, πολλοί αρχικά γελούσαν µαζί τουσ. «Εργάζοµαι στην Αθήνα και συχνά ακούω αυτή τη σύγκριση», συνεχίσει ο αρθρογράφοσ. «ΑκÞµη και ο Σαµαράσ συνέκρινε την Ελλάδα µε τη ∆ηµοκρατία τησ Βαϊµάρησ, προσπαθώντασ να προκαλέσει ενοχέσ στουσ Γερµανούσ ώστε να παρέχουν περισσÞτερο χρÞνο αποπληρωµήσ των δανείων στη χώρα του». Η Χρυσή Αυγή θα ταίριαζε µια χαρά στο βιβλίο του Ισεργουντ: µπράβοι που ξυλοκοπούν, µεγάλεσ κÞκκινεσ σηµαίεσ µε ελληνικέσ εκδοχέσ τησ σβάστικασ, πορείεσ µε πυρσούσ και παραστρατιωτικέσ συνήθειεσ. «Πήγα σε µία πορεία τουσ στο κέντρο τησ Αθήνασ ... για κÞµµα που αρνείται σχέση µε το ναζισµÞ, κάνουν πολύ καλή δουλειά στο να µοιάζουν µε νεοναζί», σχολιάζει ο ανταποκριτήσ του Guardian. Η σχέση τουσ µε την αστυνοµία επίσησ

είναι κοινÞ στοιχείο.Το 1932, ο Ισεργουντ είδε σε µία γεµάτη κÞσµο οδÞ απÞ Þπου περνούσε πορεία των ναζί, δύο παραστρατιωτικούσ τησ SA (των µετέπειτα SS) να µαχαιρώνουν νεαρÞ σε είσοδο κτιρίου. Το συµβάν έγινε µπροστά στα µάτια αστυνοµικών, που αδιαφÞρησαν για την επίθεση. Κατά εξοργιστικÞ τρÞπο η Χρυσή Αυγή φαίνεται να απολαµβάνει αντίστοιχη εύνοια απÞ τισ Αρχέσ, Þπωσ τονίζει και ο Νιλσ Μούιζνικσ, Επίτροποσ για τα Ανθρώπινα ∆ικαιώµατα αλλά και ανεξάρτητεσ οργανώσεισ. Εξάλλου, το ίδιο έδειξαν και οι δηµοσκοπήσεισ και τα αποτελέσµατα των τελευταίων εκλογών, Þσον αφορά την εκλογική προτίµηση των ανθρώπων τησ ΕΛ.ΑΣ. Οι οµοιÞτητεσ ωστÞσο τελειώνουν κάπου εδώ. Στο Βερολίνο του 1930 η άκρα αριστερά ήταν επίσησ στα πρÞθυρα πολέµου, µε Þπλα, χειροβοµβίδεσ, ακÞµη και σχέδια για εγκατάσταση πολυβÞλων στισ ταράτσεσ και σχέδια «µέχρι να έρθουν οι Σοβιετικοί». Στο Βερολίνο η πÞλωση ήταν µεταξύ αντιδηµοκρατικών άκρων. Η Ελλάδα απέχει πολύ απÞ αυτή την εικÞνα. Μπορεί η Χρυσή Αυγή να έχει αντιδηµοκρατικέσ πρακτικέσ, αλλά ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ είναι ριζοσπαστικÞσ, Þχι εξτρεµιστικÞσ, και µε πλήρεισ δηµοκρατικέσ διαδικασίεσ. Μπορεί το κάποτε πανίσχυρο κεντρώο ΠΑΣΟΚ να «έχει λίγο

πολύ τελειώσει» κατά τον συντάκτη, αλλά η Νέα ∆ηµοκρατία παραµένει δηµοφιλήσ. Αντίθετα µε τη Βαϊµάρη, δεν υπάρχει πλήρησ απαξίωση των παραδοσιακών κοµµάτων. Εξάλλου, µέσω τησ ΕΕ και του ευρώ, η µοίρα τησ Ελλάδασ συνδέεται άρρηκτα µε την υπÞλοιπη Ευρώπη, ενώ η Γερµανία του 1930 ήταν πλήρωσ αποµονωµένη. Τα στοιχήµατα τÞτε ήταν πολύ µεγαλύτερα, παρÞτι και σήµερα υποφέρουν τÞσο πολλοί απλοί Ελληνεσ. Μία απλή βÞλτα στο κέντρο τησ

Αθήνασ δείχνει Þτι η χώρα είναι σε κρίση και η σύγκριση µε Þσα περιγράφει ο Ισεργουντ παρέχει χρήσιµεσ αναλογίεσ για την οικονοµική δυσπραγία και τη σύνδεσή τησ µε τισ ακραίεσ πολιτικέσ. Η Ελλάδα ωστÞσο δεν είναι σε οριακÞ σηµείο. Ο Ισεργουντ έφυγε απÞ το Βερολίνο Þταν οι Ναζί πήραν οριστικά την εξουσία. Εάν ήταν σήµερα στην Αθήνα, δεν θα έλεγε αντίοα τουλάχιστον για κάποιο διάστηµα ακÞµη, καταλήγει το άρθρο.

¶ˆÏÔ‡Ó Ù· ˆ¿ÚÈ· ÙÔ˘˜ ¤ˆ˜ Î·È €2.000 Για οικονοµικούσ λÞγουσ δηλώνει Þτι δίνει τα ωάριά του το 40% των Ελληνίδων δωρητριών. Σύµφωνα µε έρευνα τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Εταιρείασ Ανθρώπινησ Αναπαραγωγήσ και Εµβρυολογίασ, µε βάση ερωτηµατολÞγια που συµπλήρωσαν 1.423 δÞτριεσ ωαρίων σε 60 κλινικέσ υποβοηθούµενησ αναπαραγωγήσ σε 11 ευρωπαϊκέσ χώρεσ η χρηµατική αποζηµίωση αποτελεί ισχυρÞ κίνητρο, ιδίωσ στον ευρωπαϊκÞ ΝÞτο. Οι γυναίκεσ στην Ευρώπη σε ποσοστÞ 46% δηλώνουν Þτι δίνουν τα ωάριά τουσ αποκλειστικά απÞ αλτρουισµÞ, το 32% τÞσο απÞ διάθεση προσφοράσ Þσο και για οικονοµικούσ λÞγουσ, ενώ το 10% αποκλειστικά λÞγω αποζηµίωσησ. Οι πιο «αλτρουιστικέσ» χώρεσ είναι η Γαλλία (100%), η Φινλανδία (89%) και το Βέλγιο (86%). Το υψηλÞτερο ποσοστÞ δωρητριών για οικονοµικούσ λÞγουσ το διατηρεί η Ρωσία (47%), µε την Ελλάδα να ακολουθεί (40%). Στην Ελλάδα, το 17% των δωρητριών δηλώνουν άνεργεσ, ενώ

∫¤Ú‰Ë ÁÈ· ÙËÓ ∂ÏÏ¿‰· ·fi ÙËÓ ÎÚ›ÛË Û ∞›Á˘ÙÔ-∆Ô˘ÚΛ· «∆εν περιµένει ο ελληνικÞσ τουρισµÞσ τα γεγονÞτα σε Αίγυπτο και Τουρκία για να πετύχει 17 εκατοµµύρια αφίξεισ, το 2013» τÞνισε ο πρÞεδροσ των τουριστικών πρακτÞρων στην Ελλάδα (Hatta), Γιώργοσ Τελώνησ, αναφορικά µε την εξέλιξη τησ φετινήσ τουριστικήσ κίνησησ. Το ελληνικÞ τουριστικÞ προϊÞν έχει αποδείξει την ανθεκτικÞτητα του Þλο αυτÞ το διάστηµα, υπογράµµισε ο κ. Τελώνησ, εκτιµώντασ Þτι Þσα οφέλη προκύψουν απÞ τισ εκεί αναταραχέσ, ο ελληνικÞσ τουρισµÞσ θα τα κεφαλαιοποιήσει τον Σεπτέµβριο και Οκτώβριο φέτοσ, ενώ τÞνισε Þτι αυτά θα γίνουν έντονα ορατά το 2014. Ùπωσ εξήγησε, ήδη τώρα υπογράφονται συµβÞλαια για το 2014 απÞ τουσ µεγάλουσ Tour Operators και εκτιµά Þτι το τουριστικÞ ρεύµα που ήταν να κατευθυνθεί προσ Τουρκία ή Αίγυπτο θα διοχετευθεί και σε ελληνικούσ προορισµούσ, του χρÞνου. Την ίδια στιγµή, εκφράζονται ερωτηµατικά για το «πού θα κάτσει η µπίλια» των εσÞδων για τον ελληνικÞ τουρισµÞ. Σύµφωνα µε τον κ. Τελώνη, στα 17 εκατοµµύρια αφίξεισ, οι Βαλκάνιοι, πλέον, διεκδικούν µεγάλα µερίδια επισκεψιµÞτητασ, γεγονÞσ που ακÞµα δεν επιτρέπει να υπολογιστεί µε ακρίβεια η κατά κεφαλήν δαπάνη των επισκεπτών. ΑπÞ την πλευρά του ο πρÞεδροσ τησ Ένωσησ ΞενοδÞχων Ηρακλείου, Νίκοσ Χαλκιαδάκησ υπογράµµισε Þτι ήδη η Κρήτη κινείται µε άνοδο 20% στισ αφίξεισ, µε τουσ Ρώσουσ πλέον να αποτελούν τη βασική αγορά για τουσ Κρήτεσ.

∆Ô ˘„ËÏfiÙÂÚÔ ÔÛÔÛÙfi ‰ˆÚËÙÚÈÒÓ ÁÈ· ÔÈÎÔÓÔÌÈÎÔ‡˜ ÏfiÁÔ˘˜ ÙÔ ‰È·ÙËÚ› Ë ƒˆÛ›·, ·ÎÔÏÔ˘ı› Ë ∂ÏÏ¿‰·

µÞλισ µία στισ τρεισ (30%) είναι ανύπαντρη (το αντίστοιχο ποσοστÞ στην Ισπανία και την Πορτογαλία είναι άνω του 50%). Η µέση ηλικία των δωρητριών στην Ευρώπη είναι τα 27,4 έτη (η ηλικία τησ δÞτριασ είναι κρίσιµη για την επιτυχία τησ θεραπείασ).

Tο ποσÞ τησ αποζηµίωσησ κυµαίνεται στισ περισσÞτερεσ ευρωπαϊκέσ χώρεσ µεταξύ 500 και 1.000 ευρώ, µε το µεγαλύτερο να δίνεται στο Βέλγιο (2.000). Στη Γαλλία δεν προβλέπεται αµοιβή. Σηµειώνεται Þτι απÞ κάθε δωρήτρια αφαιρούνται 5-6 ωάρια, που κατά κανÞνα προορίζονται για µία λήπτρια. Κάθε ωοθήκη περιέχει τουλάχιστον 100.000 ωάρια. Κάθε χρÞνο στην Ευρώπη πραγµατοποιούνται περίπου 17.000 κύκλοι εξωσωµατικήσ θεραπείασ αποκλειστικά µε προσφορά ωαρίων και αποτελούν το 6% των θεραπειών εξωσωµατικήσ.

¡Ù¿ÈÛÂÏÌÏÔ˘Ì: ºˆ˜ ÛÙËÓ ¿ÎÚË ÙÔ˘ ÙÔ‡ÓÂÏ Την εκτίµηση Þτι η Ελλάδα εξέρχεται σταδιακά απÞ την κρίση, καθώσ ο προϋπολογισµÞσ εκτελείται πολύ ικανοποιητικά, η οικονοµία ανακάµπτει και υπάρχουν προσδοκίεσ για ανάπτυξη το 2014, εξέφρασε ο επικεφαλήσ τησ ευρωζώνησ Γερούν Ντάϊσελµπλουµ απÞ τισ Βρυξέλλεσ. Σε δηλώσεισ του, ο πρÞεδροσ του Eurogroup τÞνισε Þτι πρÞκειται για εντυπωσιακή ανάκαµψη αλλά παράλληλα Þπωσ είπε θα απαιτηθούν περαιτέρω µεταρρυθµίσεισ. Σύµφωνα µε τον Γ. Ντάισελµπλουµ, οι µεταρρυθµίσεισ αυτέσ είναι δύσκολεσ και απαιτητικέσ αλλά απαραίτητεσ για τον εκσυγχρονισµÞ τησ οικονοµίασ και για να καταστεί πιο ανταγωνιστική η Ελλάδα. Ο Γ.Ντάισελµπλουµ εξέφρασε τέλοσ την αισιοδοξία του για έξοδο τησ Ελλάδασ απÞ την κρίση µε διαρθρωτικούσ Þρουσ.

√È ŒÏÏËÓ˜ ͤÚÔ˘Ó Ó· «Ï·‰ÒÓÔ˘Ó» Τισ χειρÞτερεσ επιδÞσεισ στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ενωση έχει η Ελλάδα και στη διαφθορά µε το 22% των πολιτών να δηλώνει Þτι «λάδωσε» κάποιον δηµÞσιο λειτουργÞ κατά το 2012. ∆ηλαδή ένασ στουσ πέντε πολίτεσ. Σύµφωνα µε το ΠαγκÞσµιο ΒαρÞµετρο ∆ιαφθοράσ που συνέταξε η ∆ιεθνήσ ∆ιαφάνεια και δÞθηκε την Τρίτη στη δηµοσιÞτητα, ο µέσοσ Þροσ διαφθοράσ για ολÞκληρο τον κÞσµο είναι 27%, ενώ η Ελλάδα βρίσκεται στο 22% του βαρÞµετρου µε πάνω απÞ έναν στουσ πέντε Ελληνεσ να δηλώνει Þτι «λάδωσε» κάποιον δηµÞσιο λειτουργÞ την περασµένη χρονιά. Υπάρχουν χώρεσ που το «λάδωµα» είναι κάτω του 1%, Þπωσ ήταν για το 2012 η ∆ανία, η Φινλανδία, η Ιαπωνία και η Αυστραλία. Στην πεντάδα των πλέον διεφθαρµένων κρατών βρίσκεται η Σιέρα ΛεÞνε µε 84%, ακολουθεί η Λιβερία µε 75%, η Υεµένη µε 74% και η Κένυα µε 70%. Η Ελλάδα βρίσκεται στισ υψηλÞτερεσ θέσεισ διαφθοράσ µεταξύ των κρατών µελών τησ Ευρωπαϊκήσ Ενωσησ µε 22%, ενώ η Κύπροσ έχει 19%, η Βουλγαρία 8%, η Ιταλία µÞλισ 5%, η Πορτογαλία 3% και η Ισπανία 2%. Η Ελλάδα θεωρείται πιο διεφθαρµένη απÞ την Αργεντινή (13%) και την Αρµενία (18%), απÞ το Ελ ΣαλβαδÞρ (12%) και το Περού (20%) καθώσ και απÞ τη Τζαµάικα (12%) ή τη γειτονική µασ πΓ∆Μ (17%).

ΧΡΗΜΑ&ΑΓΟΡΑ

10 IOYΛΙΟΥ, 2013

8 | ΑΓΟΡΑ | financialmirror.com

∆Ô ¤ÎÙÔ ·ÛÙ¤ÚÈ Ù˘ STAROIL Ï¿ÌÂÈ ÛÙÔ ∆Û¤ÚÈ Η εταιρεία πετρελαιοειδών STAROIL συνεχίζει τη δυναµική επέκταση του δικτύου τησ, ανακοινώνοντασ τη λειτουργία του έκτου τησ αστεριού στο Τσέρι, στη Λευκωσία. Στο νέο τησ πρατήριο που ξεκίνησε τη λειτουργία του στισ 24 Μαΐου, Þπωσ και στα υπÞλοιπα του δικτύου τησ, η STAROIL, προσφέρει Þλων των ειδών τα καύσιµα, Þπωσ πετρέλαιο κίνησησ και θέρµανσησ, αγροτικÞ, κηροζίνη, βενζίνη 95 και 98 οκτανίων, καθώσ και υψηλήσ ποιÞτητασ λιπαντικά Castrol. Παρέχονται επίσησ υπηρεσίεσ Þπωσ πλύσιµο αυτοκινήτου, έλεγχοσ λαδιού και µέτρηση πίεσησ ελαστικών. ∆είχνοντασ ιδιαίτερη ευαισθησία προσ το περιβάλλον, η STAROIL έχει εγκαταστήσει σε Þλα τησ τα πρατήρια, συστήµατα ανάκτησησ και επιστροφήσ των ατµών βενζίνησ απÞ τισ αντλίεσ (φάσησ ΙΙ). Το νέο πρατήριο τησ εταιρείασ βρίσκεται στην οδÞ Κώστα Μισιαούλη 168 στο Τσέρι (δρÞµοσ προσ ∆ευτερά) και ήδη έχει γίνει σηµείο αναφοράσ, τÞσο για τισ κοινÞτητεσ που το περιβάλλουν, Þσο και για τα διερχÞµενα οχήµατα.

6 - 8 ™ÂÙÂÌ‚Ú›Ô˘ ÙÔ 15Ô Pafos Aphrodite Festival Μια απολαυστική παράσταση Þπου το κωµικÞ στοιχείο συνδυάζεται αρµονικά µε στιγµέσ συγκίνησησ, θα έχουν την ευκαιρία να απολαύσουν οι θεατέσ που θα παρακολουθήσουν την Þπερα «Το ελιξίριο του έρωτα», του διάσηµου συνθέτη Gaetano Donizetti, στο φετινÞ 15ο Pafos Aphrodite Festival στισ 6, 7 και 8 Σεπτεµβρίου στο ΜεσαιωνικÞ Κάστρο τησ Πάφου. Το φετινÞ Φεστιβάλ θα είναι µια συµπαραγωγή µε τον φηµισµένο λυρικÞ οργανισµÞ Opera Futura Verona και τη Συµφωνική Ορχήστρα Κύπρου.

O καλλιτεχνικÞσ οργανισµÞσ Opera Futura ιδρύθηκε στη ΒερÞνα το 2010 και δραστηριοποιείται στην παραγωγή και σκηνοθεσία έργων Þπερασ, θεάτρου και µουσικήσ, δίνοντασ ιδιαίτερη έµφαση στην παρουσίαση παραστάσεων υψηλήσ καλλιτεχνικήσ ποιÞτητασ. ΑκÞµα µια καινοτοµία του φετινού Pafos Aphrotide Festival είναι και η συµµετοχή τησ Συµφωνικήσ Ορχήστρασ Κύπρου. Για προκρατήσεισ και πληροφορίεσ στο τηλέφωνο 26822218, στον παγκύπριο αριθµÞ χωρίσ χρέωση 8000 8005 και στην ιστοσελίδα www.pafc.com.cy. Οι τιµέσ των εισιτηρίων έχουν ωσ εξήσ: 25, 40, 50 και 70 ευρώ.

60 ¯ÚfiÓÈ· Û˘ÓÂÚÁ·Û›·˜ Unicars - Volkswagen H Unicars ευχαριστεί Þλουσ Þσουσ παρευρέθηκαν στην εκδήλωση για τα 60 χρÞνια συνεργασίασ µε τον Ùµιλο Volkswagen. Με αφορµή τη συµπλήρωση των 60 χρÞνων συνεργασίασ µε τον Ùµιλο Volkswagen, η Unicars υποδέχθηκε Þλουσ τουσ φίλουσ του αυτοκινήτου που επισκέφθηκαν το Audi Terminal την 1η Ιουνίου σε µια εκδήλωση µε Þλεσ τισ µάρκεσ του Οµίλου: VOLKSWAGEN, SEAT, SKODA και AUDI. Πολλοί απÞ τουσ επισκέπτεσ εντυπωσιάστηκαν απÞ τισ εξαιρετικέσ τιµέσ που διαµορφώθηκαν ειδικά για την εκδήλωση και επωφελήθηκαν την ευκαιρία. Η Unicars ευχαριστεί Þλουσ Þσουσ παρευρέθηκαν και εύχεται σε Þσουσ απέκτησαν το αγαπηµένο τουσ αυτοκίνητο να είναι καλοτάξιδο.

¶ÚfiÁÂ˘Ì· ÛÙ· McDonald’s Το πρÞγευµα θεωρείται το σηµαντικÞτερο γεύµα τησ ηµέρασ και η έλλειψη χρÞνου, για πάρα πολύ κÞσµο, είναι ένασ λÞγοσ που δεν το απολαβάνουν. Τα εστιατÞρια McDonald’s σασ προετοιµάζουν το πρÞγευµα σασ καθηµερινά απÞ τισ 7:00 το πρωϊ µέχρι τισ 10:30. Στο πρÞγευµα στα McDonald’s µπορεί κανείσ να επιλέξει απÞ µια µεγάλη ποικιλία απÞ προϊÞντα Þπωσ Bacon & Egg McMuffinΣ, Sausage & Egg McMuffinΣ, Sausage McMuffinΣ, Big Breakfast, Pancakes. ΕκτÞσ απÞ τη µεγάλη επιλογή προϊÞντων του McDonald’s BreakfastΣ απολαύστε καφέ απÞ 100% κÞκκουσ καφέ Arabica, που δίνει µια µοναδική γεύση καφέ και µια τέλεια ισορροπηµένη γλυκιά µυρωδιά. Τα αυγά που χρησιµοποιούνται στο πρÞγευµα στα McDonald’sΣ είναι κυπριακά ελευθέρασ βοσκήσ. Στην Κύπρο, τo πρÞγευµα προσφέρεται σε 13 εστιατÞρια McDonald’s.

ª∆¡: ŒÎÙˆÛË ÛÙÔ ÌËÓÈ·›Ô ¿ÁÈÔ Η εντυπωσιακή ανταπÞκριση του κοινού στη µεγαλύτερη προσφορά που έγινε ποτέ απÞ τηλεπικοινωνιακÞ πάροχο στην Κύπρο συνεχίζεται µέχρι το τέλοσ του µήνα: Η ΜΤΝ επεκτείνει την προσφορά τησ για 50% έκπτωση στο µηνιαίο πάγιο κάθε νέου συνδροµητή που µεταφέρει τον αριθµÞ του σε οποιοδήποτε MTN PayMonthly πλάνο, µέχρι και τισ 31 Ιουλίου. ΠερισσÞτεροι απÞ 5.000 καταναλωτέσ µετάφεραν τον αριθµÞ τουσ σε ΜΤΝ PayMonthly απÞ την έναρξη τησ προσφοράσ µέχρι σήµερα και απολαµβάνουν έκπτωση στον λογαριασµÞ τουσ, αποδεικνύοντασ Þτι η εταιρεία αναγνωρίζει τισ ανάγκεσ τουσ και ανταποκρίνεται σε αυτέσ αποτελεσµατικά, µε ευέλικτεσ και οικονοµικέσ λύσεισ. Η ΜΤΝ δίνει στουσ νέουσ συνδροµητέσ, που θα µεταφέρουν τον αριθµÞ τουσ, την ευκαιρία να εξοικονοµήσουν 50% στο µηνιαίο τουσ πάγιο για 18 ολÞκληρουσ µήνεσ, αντί για έκπτωση σε κινητÞ και να απολαµβάνουν τα προνÞµια που προσφέρουν τα MTN PayMonthly προγράµµατα. Η ΜΤΝ Κύπρου διαθέτει το µεγαλύτερο ιδιÞκτητο δίκτυο σηµείων πώλησησ ολοκληρωµένων λύσεων τεχνολογίασ απÞ οποιαδήποτε άλλη εταιρία τηλεπικοινωνιών στην Κύπρο µε 20 ΜΤΝ Stores.

√ Armin Van Buuren ÛÙËÓ ∫‡ÚÔ Ο διεθνούσ φήµησ «Ιπτάµενοσ» ΟλλανδÞσ DJ Armin Van Buuren βάζει και πάλι την Κύπρο στο πρÞγραµµα των συναυλιών του, και έρχεται στη χώρα µασ για µια και µοναδική εµφάνιση στισ 18 Αυγούστου, υποσχÞµενοσ να ανεβάσει ξανά τουσ ρυθµούσ στο κÞκκινο στο ξέφρενο καλοκαιρινÞ πάρτι που θα στηθεί στην παραλία των Φοινικούδων στη Λάρνακα. Ο Armin Van Buuren βρίσκεται για πέµπτη φορά -τα τελευταία έξι χρÞνια- στην κορυφή τησ λίστασ του DJ Mag µε τουσ κορυφαίουσ DJs στον κÞσµο! Εισιτήρια διατίθενται στην τιµή των 25 ευρώ (περιορισµένοσ αριθµÞσ early birds) και 30 ευρώ. Η προπώληση των εισιτηρίων έχει ξεκινήσει. Η προπώληση των εισιτηρίων γίνεται επίσησ και µέσω των ιστοσελίδων www.mixlife.com και www.tickethour.com.cy Για περισσÞτερεσ πληροφορίεσ µπείτε στισ ιστοσελίδεσ www.moonlightshow.com και www.mixfmradio.com ή επικοινωνήστε στα τηλέφωνα 99310031 και 77772939.

Nestle: ¡¤· ·È‰Èο ·ÁˆÙ¿ Το παγωτÞ ήταν, είναι και θα είναι η αγαπηµένη λιχουδιά των µικρών µασ φίλων! Γι’ αυτÞ φέτοσ το καλοκαίρι έρχεται µια νέα σειρά παγωτών που θα τουσ συναρπάσει! ΠρÞκειται για το PIRULO WATERMELON, το LAKY BOY ο «Μποµπ Σφουγγαράκησ» και το LAKY GIRL, η Hello Kitty µπαίνει στην κουζίνα και χαρίζει απίθανεσ φιγούρεσ µε σχέδια µαγειρικήσ που θα λατρέψουν τα κορίτσια. Το PIRULO JUNGLY, το παγωτÞ που πέρσι έκλεψε την παράσταση, φέτοσ έρχεται και σε πολυσυσκευασία 8 τεµαχίων για να προσφέρει ακÞµη περισσÞτερη απÞλαυση στουσ µικρούσ πρωταγωνιστέσ του καλοκαιριού και στο σπίτι. Τα νέα παγωτά τησ Nestlé είναι και σύµµαχοι των γονιών στισ διατροφικέσ ανάγκεσ των παιδιών τουσ, καθώσ περιέχουν ελάχιστεσ θερµίδεσ. Τα παγωτά Nestlé µπορείτε να τα βρείτε στα πράσινα ψυγεία και διατίθενται στην αγορά απÞ την Βάσσοσ Ηλιάδησ Λτδ.

July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com PROPERTY

17

Making green buildings more attractive There is an ever increasing interest world wide in green buildings with European and American building certifications in place.

The first thing that comes to mind for most people when they hear about green buildings is energy. Surely energy is very important but its only one of many parameters that will make a building green.

In a green building where we require to be able to purchase as little energy from outside and the wellbeing of the occupants is of the outmost importance.

In the northern hemisphere, the south side of the house will be the one that should have the large doors and windows and the north side the small openings. Therefore the orientation of the building is of the outmost importance.

We should however pay attention to the need to gather as much heat from the sun during the winter and prevent the heat from entering the building through its openings in the summer. This, together with good insulation, use of natural lighting (or even passive solar lights), low energy consuming fittings and wind and solar energy production, will reduce immensely the energy needs of the building.

A feature that will add to the attractiveness of the building is the addition of a green roof or a green wall both of which also improve the energy performance of the building. Space permitting, a green wall is a very attractive feature to have inside the building.

Another much easier issue to deal with is the water consumption of the house. We need to choose dual-flush toilets, regulate the water pressure and add fittings to taps and

water outlets. Rainwater harvesting and reuse in the garden or for the toilets combined with ground water, will greatly reduce water consumption. It is of course important to make sure that our garden is designed for the type of climate we have and use as little water as possible.

An important feature that will also have a large impact on the energy needs of the building is the correct planting of trees around the building. We need to prevent cold weather reaching the building from the north with a green barrier

By Charalampos Theopemptou Charalampos Theopemptou is a lecturer, Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the Cyprus University of Technology and a former Environment

made up from bushes and trees. In the south we need to have trees that will cast a shade on the building during the summer, but they will lose their leaves during the winter to allow the sun to warm the walls and enter the windows and doors.

For those that are adjacent to the beach and want to have a swimming pool you will find that two wells (in and out of the pool) will give you plentiful supply of healthy sea water that does not need to be treated with chemicals as you can keep replenishing this continually.

For a good healthy environment inside a house with children, we need to have excellent indoor air quality.

In order to achieve this, we need to avoid having exposed horizontal surfaces and carpets that can gather dust, and pay attention to the paints used, the materials with which furniture are made and the cleaning products used.

These are very important especially in the children’s room where we don’t want plastics; we need to carefully select certified textiles and all paints on walls and furniture should be ecologically certified.

Certain plants are also important to have inside the house, like the “Areca” which attracts the harmful dust particles, the “money plant” which absorbs chemicals and the “sanseviera or Mother in law’s tongue” which keeps producing oxygen day and night.

And of course the residents of a green building should cycle regularly so a provision should be made for the safe parking of the family bicycles.

This is just a taste of the features we expect in a green building which should also be designed to be liveable for the whole life of the couple and the family, from being young to be able to move about when they get old.

Charalampos Theopemptou is a lecturer, Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the Cyprus University of Technology and a former Environment Commissioner of the Republic. www.theopemptou.com Twitter: @theopemptou

Leptos hosts Egyptian journalists A group of ten Egyptian journalists from Cairo and Alexandria visited Cyprus on a four day fact-finding trip as guests of the Leptos Group.

During their stay they visited property developments, the University of Neapolis, the Iasis medical centre, as well as hotels and resorts operated by the Leptos Group in Paphos and Limassol. They also planted trees at the Kamares Village.

The Egyptian journalists also had the opportunity to meet with Commerce, Industry and Tourism Minister Yiorgos Lakkotripis, Paphos Mayor Savvas Vergas, archeological sites, museums, the old shopping centre and the nightlife of Kato Paphos.

Sunrise Pearl Spa: an oasis of wellness and relaxation The Sunrise Pearl in Protaras, part of the Sunrise Hotels group, has introduced a wellness and relaxation spa offering luxury and relaxation through high-quality services and amenities, such as ancient herbal remedies for the face, massages and body treatments. The aqua thermal treatments are also on offer, as are foot cleansing therapies, which prepare the body for alternately heated rooms such as the samarium, steam bath, sauna, show chamber and invigorating showers. The room temperature rises gradually in these rooms to assist the detoxification procedure and cleansing of the skin, as well as muscle and joint relaxation. The cool pools then help the body cool off and relax.

Sunrise Pearl Spa offers packages for day-long therapies, a hair salon, manicures and pedicures. The hotel, which opened its gates to the public last July, is on the Protaras coast, next to the Sunrise Hotel. The hotel has 99 deluxe rooms, 10 junior suites with private access to a pool, three restaurants, three bars and four outdoor swimming pools. www.sunrise.com.cy.

July 10 - 16, 2013

18 | WORLD MARKETS | financialmirror.com

Markets respond to low interest rates

By Oren Laurent President, Banc De Binary

Mark Carney has been creating quite a stir.

In his first week on the job, the new Bank of England governor has sent share prices soaring, and along with Mario Draghi, has issued a strong message that the UK and Europe will not be sheepishly following America’s fiscal policy.

So what do the markets make of him? And what does his appointment mean for investors?

Carney, furthering his reputation as a monetary dove, said after his first Monetary Policy Committee meeting last Monday that investors were “not warranted” in thinking that interest rates would rise next year. Shortly after, Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, echoed the same sentiment, clearly stating that the rates would remain at current or lower levels “for an extended period of time.”

In suggesting a time frame for rate policy, the central bank bosses broke with conventional protocol and led many economists to predict that the UK will not see any rate increase until 2015 at the earliest.

Carney also hinted that he will adopt the Chancellor’s recommendation that the Bank

look for alternative strategies, prompting speculation of further quantitative easing.

The markets were quick to respond.

Reacting to the prospect of stimulus, the sterling and euro fell against the dollar, with GDP dropping 1.4% against the USD in its steepest decline since September 2011. At the same time, stocks and bonds rose, given expectations that low interest rates will boost the economy.

The FTSE 100 jumped up after Carney’s speech, and rose further following Draghi’s, while Britian’s blue chip index climbed 3.1% to finish at 6421.67, adding £49 bln to company valuations, the single biggest daily increase in almost two years. The positive impacts reverberated around Europe with the French CAC and German DAX gaining 2.9% and 2.1%, respectively.

It seems that Carney and Draghi are on a mission to halt the recent market turmoil that has led to high levels of government borrowing throughout the developed world, and to protect their economies from a US-led surge in bond yields.

Their rhetoric will effectively distance them from the policies of Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Benanke, who has signalled that the US will implement an $85 bln a month bondbuying program later in 2013.

Neither Bank chiefs were obliged to speak so openly. That they both did would indicate that the move was coordinated rather than a coincidence.

This game changer comes at the right time

and will hopefully have positive repercussions for the UK and EU regions. In June, confidence in the euro currency bloc reached its highest level in over a year, while UK services and manufacturing growth accelerated to their fastest level in more than two years. Carney and Draghi’s statement will likely further the trend and allow the continent its much needed economic independence from the US. It was a bold move. With strong words, they seemed to have paved the way for investors to capitalise on the markets and boost the

economy. And for Carney, it was only week one.

What moves will he pull next?

www.bbinary.com

Dollar supported by Fed policy view The dollar remained well bid against major currencies and its broad uptrend was seen intact as the market positions for when the U.S. Federal Reserve will start to slow its stimulus.

Expectations that the Fed will reduce its bond-buying as early as September are expected to keep the dollar buoyant, although there is caution about its nearterm outlook in the wake of recent gains. In the short term, however, the dollar could retreat as it approaches technical resistance.

While the Fed is seen heading toward reducing its monetary stimulus later this year, the European Central Bank has said it would keep interest rates at record lows for an extended period, and the Bank of England has indicated that it is in no hurry to raise interest rates. The Bank of Japan is expected to continue with its aggressive monetary stimulus.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback’s value against a basket of currencies, edged up 0.1% to 84.268. The dollar index had set a three-year high of

trading platform EBS, its highest level in nearly six weeks.

Gains in the dollar, however, could be tempered if there is any position unwinding

FOREX COMMENTARY & TECHNICAL ANALYSIS 84.588 on Monday following Friday’s upbeat U.S. jobs report. The euro was last at $1.2861, not too far from a seven-week trough of $1.2806 hit on Friday.

Traders told Reuters the euro has support on technical charts in the $1.2700 to $1.2750 area. Traders said the euro faces resistance around $1.2883, the July 4 intraday low, followed by $1.2923, the July 3 intraday low. Against the yen, the dollar edged up 0.2% to 101.10 yen. On Monday, the dollar had hit a high of 101.54 yen on

in the wake of recent gains. Currency speculators hugely increased their bets in favor of the U.S. dollar in the week ended July 2, while turning negative on the euro.

Investors had grown increasingly bullish on the dollar after the Fed laid out a roadmap for scaling back its asset-purchase program as the economy improves. In contrast, the European Central Bank last week broke with tradition by declaring it would keep interest rates at record lows for

an extended period, a pledge ECB President Mario Draghi reiterated on Monday.

“We remain bullish USD versus the currencies where central banks are signaling continued policy easing, most notably the EUR, GBP, CHF and JPY,” analysts at BNP Paribas wrote in a report.

“We are more cautious versus the currencies of commodity exporter economies, where short positioning is generally stretched and where better U.S. data may provide some cushion against the negative effects of China’s slowdown in the months ahead.”

The Australian dollar slipped 0.1% to $0.9126, after having set a 34-month trough of $0.9036 last week. Investors largely shrugged off data showing inflation in China quickened in June as they waited for trade figures on Wednesday. www.eurivex.com

Disclaimer: The commentary appearing on this page is for indication purposes only and Eurivex does not take any responsibility for investment action taken. Nothing in this report should be considered to constitute investment advice. It is not intended, and should not be considered, as an offer, invitation, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any of the financial instruments described herein. Trading on leverage is very risky and may lead to losses.

July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com | MARKETS | 19

Counter-balancing market trends?

Marcuard’s Market update

by GaveKal Research Over the past decade, investors needed to come up with one of two ideas to ensure outsized success: “front run the Chinese” or alternatively “front run the Fed”.

Front running the Chinese made sense because of two major economic trends: a) in the course of a decade, China added 200mn productive workers to its labor force, b) over the same period China also witnessed a massive balance sheet expansion by all of its major economic actors. Now, both of these expansions are over. And as a result the price of Bordeaux wine is no longer rising, neither is Vancouver or Hong Kong real estate, nor Chinese modern art, nor commodities or the asset markets of raw material producing

countries (Brazil, Russia, Australia...). The next shoe to drop will likely be the share prices of European and US exporters, which must now confront an environment of weaker nominal economic growth in emerging markets, combined with intensified competition from Japanese rivals.

Front running the Federal Reserve was mostly a bond manager’s game and corresponded to the belief that the Fed would continue to buy long-dated bonds into the indeterminate future. Equity investors also got in on the game by bidding up income stocks, stable growth stocks, etc... And this was the trade that unwound violently from late May as fears gripped the market that Ben Bernanke would try to “normalize” US monetary policy before passing on the baton to his successor in January.

However, there is an inherent contradiction

to the suggestion that both of these mega trends could end at the same time. After all, a significant Chinese slowdown would represent yet another deflationary downdraft to add to the southern European deflationary bust, Japan’s devaluation of the yen and the fall in commodity prices. If such a deflationary scenario unfolds then we would certainly argue that there is little reason to jump back into “front-running the Chinese” trades and that the recent capitulation does not present a long-term buying opportunity. However, if a serious China slowdown is indeed unfolding, then we may just be witnessing a terrific opportunity to resume the “front running of the Fed” trades—in particular given the big UST sell-off which followed Friday’s stronger than expected US jobs report.

This “front-running of the Fed” trade could further be amplified if, as we suspect, the next

Europe’s control engineers Marcuard’s Market update

by GaveKal Research “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind,” so said Rudyard Kipling. When central bankers meet next month for the annual Jackson Hole shindig, they can ruminate on their success being increasingly dictated less by what they do, than what they say.

Take the European Central Bank and Bank of England which in recent months have been fairly taciturn next to a loquacious Federal Reserve. Yet, by verbalizing forward guidance on their intention to change very little, both affected an immediate easing of monetary conditions.

Truly, we live in an age where control engineers are running economic policy.

Moreover, the ECB and BoE signalled that they do not share the Fed’s apparent willingness to soon let the market dictate the level of long term interest rates. The consensus going into last Thursday’s ECB meeting was for little deviation as manufacturing indicators were ticking up and all major policy making was on hold until after German elections in September.

In fact, both central banks showed that they remain worried about deflationary pressure

resulting from weak European banks.

Mario Draghi surprised the market by breaking with ECB practice and offering explicit forward guidance on its intention to keep rates low “for an extended period of time”, with an easing bias. He also provided color on policymakers thinking by highlighting poor bank credit growth numbers; we would expect more ECB activism with loan guarantee schemes similar to the BoE’s “Funding for Lending” scheme, which has been widely hailed a success.

All of this makes us more comfortable with the European situation which had looked set to deteriorate due to Portugal’s troubles and increased fears about ECB neglect.

We generally prefer a Europe where the ECB is worried about growth than the reverse—remember the spring of 2011 when a complacent Jean-Claude Trichet presided over one of the great central bank bungles of modern history by raising rates just as economic conditions began to collapse in the eurozone’s heavily indebted and uncompetitive periphery.

This time, the message seems to be that the ECB will fight any tightening of monetary conditions that emerges either from the credit or the currency markets. This augurs well, should the apparent

www.marcuardheritage.com

rapprochement within Portugal’s governing coalition break down and we plunge back into a contagion cycle.

The ECB’s move means that broad expectations about central bank action have almost run full circle in the space of a month. Markets suffered a near heart attack after Ben Bernanke’s June 19 press conference when he ruminated on the economic conditions that would justify a tapering of the Fed’s asset purchases. Ever since, Fed officials have done everything to downplay those comments, without actually disavowing their chairman.

For this reason, Friday’s monthly jobs report were critical in shaping near term expectations on policy. Markets could be at one of those perversely good-is-bad junctures, with the monthly jobs report confirming the strong reading by Wednesday’s ADP number.

If so, attention will revert to Ben Bernanke who is set to have yet another go at explaining his “exit” thinking in a speech on Wednesday.

He seems likely to focus his attention on the conditionality attached to any tapering action, and as such, markets will most likely interpret this as an act of contrition. In this case, we would expect a near term pull back in long rates, and most likely, continued strength in major market equities.

Disclaimer: This information may not be construed as advice and in particular not as investment, legal or tax advice. Depending on your particular circumstances you must obtain advice from your respective professional advisors. Investment involves risk. The value of investments may go down as well as up. Past performance is no guarantee for future performance. Investments in foreign currencies are subject to exchange rate fluctuations. Marcuard Cyprus Ltd is regulated by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySec) under License no. 131/11.

Interest Rates Base Rates

LIBOR rates

CCY 0-0,25% 0.50% 0.50% 0-0,1% 0-0,25%

Swap Rates

CCY/Period

1mth

2mth

3mth

6mth

1yr

CCY/Period

2yr

3yr

4yr

5yr

7yr

10yr

USD GBP EUR JPY CHF

0.19 0.49 0.07 0.12 0.00

0.24 0.50 0.10 0.14 0.01

0.27 0.51 0.14 0.16 0.02

0.41 0.59 0.24 0.23 0.08

0.69 0.89 0.45 0.42 0.24

USD GBP EUR JPY CHF

0.54 0.71 0.47 0.25 0.11

0.87 0.92 0.64 0.31 0.26

1.29 1.21 0.87 0.39 0.46

1.70 1.51 1.11 0.49 0.67

2.33 2.02 1.51 0.72 1.05

2.89 2.55 1.97 1.02 1.47

Exchange Rates Major Cross Rates CCY1\CCY2 USD EUR GBP CHF JPY

Opening Rates

100 1 USD 1 EUR 1 GBP 1 CHF JPY 1.2881 0.7763

1.4974

1.0335

0.9878

1.1625

0.8023

0.7669

0.6678

0.8602

0.9676

1.2464

1.4489

0.6902

101.23

130.39

151.58

0.6597 0.9558

104.62

Israel Corp plans £2 bln LSE listing

A company being spun-off from Israel Corp, one of Israel’s largest conglomerates, is planning a 2 bln pound listing on the London Stock Exchange. Israel Corp, controlled by billionaire Idan Ofer, announced last month it would split off some of its less-profitable assets into a new, listed company in a bid to boost the value of its core businesses and attract a broader range of investors. The holding company will keep two of its most lucrative and stable companies - fertiliser and specialty chemicals maker Israel Chemicals (ICL) and Oil Refineries, Israel’s biggest refinery. The Sunday Times reported that the London listing would include shipping company Zim, chipmaker TowerJazz, IC Power and Israeli-Chinese carmaker Qoros.

Before the reorganisation, Israel Corp will work towards resolving Zim’s $2.7 bln debt load through a restructuring with banks, shipyards and bondholders.

WORLD CURRENCIES PER US DOLLAR CURRENCY

CODE

RATE

EUROPEAN Belarussian Ruble British Pound * Bulgarian Lev Czech Koruna Danish Krone Estonian Kroon Euro * Georgian Lari Hungarian Forint Latvian Lats Lithuanian Litas Maltese Pound * Moldavan Leu Norwegian Krone Polish Zloty Romanian Leu Russian Rouble Swedish Krona Swiss Franc Ukrainian Hryvnia

BYR GBP BGN CZK DKK EEK EUR GEL HUF LVL LTL MTL MDL NOK PLN RON RUB SEK CHF UAH

8850 1.4974 1.518 20.03 5.7901 12.1477 1.2881 1.649 227.96 0.5443 2.6803 0.3333 12.5578 6.1392 3.3547 3.4476 33.0073 6.7714 0.9676 8.12

AUD CAD HKD INR JPY KRW NZD SGD

0.9177 1.0535 7.7567 60.09 101.23 1141.55 1.271 1.2769

BHD EGP IRR ILS JOD KWD LBP OMR QAR SAR ZAR AED

0.3770 7.0150 12067.90 3.6516 0.7077 0.2864 1512.00 0.3850 3.6413 3.7502 10.0615 3.6727

AZN KZT TRY

0.7833 152.24 1.9370

AMERICAS & PACIFIC

The Financial Markets

USD GBP EUR JPY CHF

key investment trend is to “front-run the Japanese investor”. After all, to the extent that the Japanese investor seeks income more than capital appreciation, then, for now at least, the “front running of the Japanese investor” is not that different from the “front running of the Fed” trade. It favors income stocks, high yielding bonds (whether in the US or Emerging markets), REITs, etc. With one key exception: Japanese equities. Indeed, with a domestic economy that is picking up momentum, stocks that are hardly expensive and both the Bank of Japan and domestic commercial banks simultaneously expanding their balance sheets, Japanese investors may well end up placing their excess cash in domestic stocks. But aside from the still very attractive Japanese equities, defensives and interest-rate sensitive’s almost everywhere should continue to outperform.

Weekly movement of USD

CCY\Date

11.06

18.06

25.06

02.07

09.07

CCY

Today

USD GBP JPY CHF

1.3220

1.3297

1.3061

1.3007

1.2809

0.8483

0.8469

0.8461

0.8560

0.8575

129.48

125.85

127.16

129.43

129.27

1.2297

1.2251

1.2171

1.2282

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July 10 - 16, 2013

20 WORLD MARKETS financialmirror.com

ECB drops old philosophy, but is short of new options The European Central Bank’s vow last week to keep record-low interest rates “at present or lower levels for an extended period” is a big philosophical shift for a bank that used to insist it would not tie its hands.

ANALYSIS On the face of it an unprecedented and bold move, such ‘forward guidance’ is really just formal recognition of what markets expected anyway, and the bank’s realistic policy options are narrowly confined.

ECB President Mario Draghi, who vowed a year ago to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, said the move was driven by market volatility, which set in after the U.S. Federal Reserve last month set out a plan to begin slowing its stimulus.

“Draghi’s message was a clear break from the ‘we never pre-commit’ ECB of the past,” said Andrew Bosomworth, a senior portfolio manager at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund. “The Governing Council wants the world to know they are on a different timetable to the Fed,” he added.

But the ECB’s steer is more flimsy than the guidance offered by the Federal Reserve or even the Bank of England, which suggested last Thursday it could give more detailed guidance on monetary policy as soon as next month.

The risk is that when the Fed does begin unwinding its stimulus, the ECB’s words won’t be enough to protect the euro zone from the fallout, and market interest rates will rise - a scenario that would make the bloc’s escape from crisis harder. Then the ECB would have to back up its words with action, and the policy options it has are unpalatable to many at the bank - a conservative institution focused on inflation fighting.

“What they have done is very soft. We don’t know what ‘extended period’ is,” said Anders Svendsen, analyst at Nordea.

RBS economist Richard Barwell agreed: “Nobody thought they were going to hike rates ... It was a statement of the obvious.”

A Reuters poll of more than 60 analysts conducted before last Thursday’s policy meeting showed they already expected the ECB to keep its main refinancing and deposit rates on hold at their record lows until at least the end of next year.

The ECB duly held its main rate at 0.5% and left the deposit rate it pays banks for holding their money at zero.

WORDS IN ACTION

The phrasing of the ECB’s guidance is crucial. Draghi said the Governing Council “expects” rates to remain at their existing level or go lower, he did not make a cast-iron promise.

The morning after the policy announcement, Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen qualified the pledge to keep rates low, saying it is good for as long as the economy remains weak.

“When there are changes, they will be taken into account. Everything depends on the development of the economy,” he told Finnish broadcaster YLE.

A sudden, if unlikely, pick-up in the euro zone economy or an oil price shock could easily force a change in policy.

The more immediate threat to the euro zone, however, is fresh market turmoil when the Fed begins unwinding its stimulus.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s announcement on June 19 that the U.S. economy central bank was likely to begin slow-

ing the pace of its bond-buying later this year sent peripheral euro zone sovereign bond yields sharply higher.

A political crisis in Portugal pushed yields on its benchmark bonds above 8 percent last week, near levels that forced it to seek international aid two years ago.

RBS’s Barwell said the ECB’s guidance should inoculate shorterdated bond yields from the impact of the Fed ‘tapering’. “What happens if that fails? What happens if the contagion comes nonetheless?

Then they are back in the ball game of they might have to do something rather than talking,” he said.

Yet the conditions attached to the ECB’s sharpest policy tool - its bond-buying programme known as Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) - mean the central bank cannot use it to help Portugal at the moment, or even Spain or Italy for that matter.

OMT requires a country to seek outside help from the euro rescue fund - which neither Rome or Madrid have done - and be issuing debt regularly on the bond market for the central bank to intervene and buy its bonds.

ECB RULES UNCHANGED

Portugal has been issuing Treasury bills but is not regularly issu-

ing longer-dated bonds across the yield curve. Draghi said last week the ECB rules on the OMT were unchanged, all but directly leaving Portugal alone to resolve its crisis.

That leaves more specific guidance - with a clearer timeframe or straightforward rate cuts as alternative options. Draghi said the ECB discussed cutting rates last week.

The trouble with rate cuts is that the ECB’s low rates are not reaching all euro zone economies evenly, with lenders in crisis-hit states passing on higher funding costs to customers.

A further option is to offer banks another batch of ultra-cheap long-term loans, known as LTROs. The ECB lent banks a total of more than 1 trln euros in such twin three-year lending operations in December 2011 and February 2012 - a ploy that Draghi said “avoided a major, major credit crunch”.

The interest rate on the loans, which banks are now repaying early, is tied to the ECB’s refinancing rate. Barwell believed a new LTRO would need to be offered at a fixed rate for banks to take it up, and thereby push down market interest rates.

“I think it can’t be the same as what’s been done before,” he said. “My view is that they’ve got to make it more attractive, and the key thing to do would be a fixed-rate LTRO.” The IMF is already pressing the ECB to take such action. In its annual Clause IV consultations with Italy, the IMF on Thursday called for the ECB to complement Italy’s reform efforts with direct assets purchases and more bumper loans to euro zone banks.

“Direct asset purchases by the ECB, such as for SME credits, another LTRO of considerable tenor, and lower haircuts on eligible collateral would help lower bank funding costs and lending rates,” the IMF said.

Full-on asset purchases with a U.S.-style quantitative easing programme could depress yields further out than the 2-3 year maturities that Pimco’s Bosomworth said the ECB’s commitment to low rates for an “extended period” would cover.

But the conservative DNA of many ECB policymakers makes them averse to such radical policy steps.

Going further would be much harder for the ECB. Draghi stressed last week that the move to take forward guidance was “unprecedented” and a “very significant step”.

“This was as strong a commitment as one can get that the ECB will remain accommodative for as long as needed,” said Bosomworth.

EBA preparing database on bankers The European Union will soon begin sharing information on how bankers fare in ‘fitness and probity’ tests in member states, making it harder for errant bankers to evade regulatory scrutiny by crossing national borders.

The European Banking Authority’s regulation director Isabel Vaillant told Reuters that work will begin on the new fitness and probity database next year, ending the current system of ad hoc sharing between national authorities. The database will contain details of national supervisors’ assessments of newly appointed bank directors, senior management, divisional heads and some other key functions like internal control.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, when bankers were blamed for taking their institutions and in some cases their national economies to the brink, the register is part of a wider effort by the EBA to standardise the way countries across the EU 28 decide which bankers are fit and proper for the job.

The EBA lacks the power to compel countries to set the same standards for bankers across the EU but has brought in new guidelines on how countries should evaluate bankers’ suitability and will “name and shame” countries that don’t comply, Vaillant said.

The EBA was given the power to collect the information under

the latest version of new European banking regulations dubbed CRD IV. “We will build a database here only for the purposes of this,” she said, adding that while the database could not include information obtained from the police it would include other information collected by supervisors, including whether candidates had received the regulatory nod for a role.

All the authorities will have to consult the database when they are assessing candidates who present themselves for new roles that are captured by that country’s fitness and probity regime, a group that usually includes directors, senior managers and heads of major divisions. National authorities will have to submit information to the centralised system, but a regulator’s refusal to allow a candidate to take a position in one country will not automatically mean a rejection in another, Vaillant said.

“It (the result) has to be circumstantiated and scrutinised,” she said. “Why did you have a refusal? Was it because you were not an investment banker, but a retail banker in a small bank? Is it because you were not of good repute? This has more weight, probably, and may ban you everywhere. But you need to consider the individual case; there is no tick box approach.”

NON-BINDING

Most EU countries have signalled their intention to comply with the guidelines, and Vaillant hopes they will be implemented effectively within the next two years.

Though the guidelines are not binding, Vaillant said the ability to name and shame was a form of policing.

It is not yet clear whether the European Central Bank will be able to enforce fitness and probity rules once it takes over supervision of the euro zone’s banks. Philippe-Emmanuel Partsch, partner at Luxembourg-based law firm Arendt & Medernach, told Reuters the ECB would have no more power than the EBA has.

Pierre-Henri Conac, an expert in EU banking law with Luxembourg’s university, said the ECB could go further under a clause of the single supervisory mechanism legislation that empowers the ECB to establish adequate corporate governance at the banks it supervises.

“If you don’t control this, you don’t control anything in the bank; it would make no sense if you could not control this,” Conac said.

“The ECB is entitled to make a new review of fitness and probity, and I think they will do it.”

July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com WORLD MARKETS 21

GLOBAL ECONOMY: No escaping the Fed World markets in thrall to Fed’s reaction to growth; Contrasting growth messages to come from Japan and China As the Federal Reserve moves closer to scaling back its monetary stimulus, central banks in the rest of the world may get another reminder this week of just how tough it is to decouple from U.S. interest rates.

German and British bond yields tracked U.S. yields sharply higher on Friday following solid U.S. jobs data, a day after the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, anxious to protect their economies from rising U.S. borrowing costs, said they would keep short-term rates firmly anchored near zero.

Minutes of the Fed’s June 19 policy deliberations could put further upward pressure on bond yields if they show broad support for phasing out the central bank’s asset purchases, now running at $85 bln a month.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke caught markets off guard by announcing after that meeting that the bond buying could run its course by mid-2014, depending on job market developments.

“You can imagine a story where bond yields are dragged higher. Obviously policy makers here and in Europe won’t be too pleased with that,” said David Owen, chief European financial economist with Jefferies in London.

“All they can do is to try to reiterate that, from the point of view of the macro economy, Europe and the UK are not in the same space as the U.S. and so neither the ECB in particular, nor the Bank of England, is going to be raising rates for a very

Why is US inflation so low?

Why has quantitative easing coexisted with price stability in the United States? Or, as I often hear, “Why has the Federal Reserve’s printing of so much money not caused higher inflation?”

Inflation has certainly been very low. During the past five years, the consumer price index has increased at an annual rate of just 1.5%. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation – the price index for personal consumption expenditures, excluding food and energy – also rose at a rate of just 1.5%.

By contrast, the Fed’s purchases of long-term bonds during this period has been unprecedentedly large. The Fed bought more than $2 trillion of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, nearly ten times the annual rate of bond purchases during the previous decade. In the last year alone, the stock of bonds on the Fed’s balance sheet has risen more than 20%.

The historical record shows that rapid monetary growth does fuel high inflation. That was very clear during Germany’s hyperinflation in the 1920’s and Latin America’s in the 1980’s. But even more moderate shifts in America’s monetary growth rate have translated into corresponding shifts in the rate of inflation. In the 1970’s, US money supply grew at an average annual rate of 9.6%, the highest rate in the previous half-century; inflation averaged 7.4%, also a half-century high. In the 1990’s, annual monetary growth averaged only 3.9%, and the average inflation rate was just 2.9%.

That is why the absence of any inflationary response to the Fed’s massive bond purchases in the past five years seems so puzzling. But the puzzle disappears when we recognize that quantitative easing is not the same thing as “printing money” or, more accurately, increasing the stock of money.

long time,” he added.

Bernanke will have the chance to set the record straight as he is due to give a speech hours after the minutes come out.

Victoria Clarke, an economist with Investec in London, said the Fed chief and his deputy, Janet Yellen, probably favoured a careful withdrawal of stimulus.

Friday’s employment report can only strengthen the hand of the Fed’s hawks.

The economy added 195,000 payroll jobs in June, and the average monthly increase since September exceeds 200,000 the threshold many think needs to be breached for growth to advance from its well-established rate of around 2%.

Bruce Kasman, an economist with J.P. Morgan in New York, now expects the Fed to start whittling down its bond buying in September. Before the jobs data he had thought the central bank might wait until December.

JAPAN UP, CHINA DOWN Japan also has wind in its sails at long last, and the Bank of Japan, - engaged, like the Fed, in a vast expansion of its balance sheet - is expected to upgrade its outlook of the economy for the seventh month in a row.

“Japan will outperform other developed markets for the rest of 2013,” said Patrick Zweifel, chief economist in Geneva for Pictet Asset Management.

By Martin Feldstein Professor of Economics at Harvard University and President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research, chaired President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984.

The stock of money that relates most closely to inflation consists primarily of the deposits that businesses and households have at commercial banks. Traditionally, greater amounts of Fed bond buying have led to faster growth of this money stock. But a fundamental change in the Fed’s rules in 2008 broke the link between its bond buying and the subsequent size of the money stock. As a result, the Fed has bought a massive amount of bonds without causing the stock of money – and thus the rate of inflation – to rise.

The link between bond purchases and the money stock depends on the role of commercial banks’ “excess reserves.”

When the Fed buys Treasury bonds or other assets like mortgage-backed securities, it creates “reserves” for the commercial banks, which the banks deposit at the Fed itself.

Commercial banks are required to hold reserves equal to a share of their checkable deposits. Since reserves in excess of the required amount did not earn any interest from the Fed before 2008, commercial banks had an incentive to lend to households and businesses until the resulting growth of deposits used up all of those excess reserves. Those increased deposits at commercial banks were, by definition, an increase in the relevant stock of money.

An increase in bank loans allows households and businesses to increase their spending. That extra spending means a higher level of nominal GDP (output at market prices). Some of the increase in nominal GDP takes the form of higher real (inflation-adjusted) GDP, while the rest shows up as inflation.

That is how Fed bond purchases have historically increased the stock of money – and the rate of inflation.

The link between Fed bond purchases and the subsequent growth of the money stock changed after 2008, because the Fed began to pay interest on excess reserves. The interest rate on these totally safe and liquid deposits induced the banks to maintain excess reserves at the Fed instead of lending and creating deposits to absorb the increased reserves, as they would have done before 2008.

By Alan Wheatley Reuters Global Economics Correspondent

He said political risks facing the euro zone remained a concern, as last week’s government rift in Portugal showed.

But, even though May industrial output is likely to have edged down, Zweifel said economic headwinds were abating and the 17-country area could eke out modest growth in the second half of 2013.

By contrast, China, the world’s second-largest economy, is likely to report sluggish exports and imports with deflation entrenched at the wholesale level - a tell-tale sign of overcapacity plaguing many industries, including shipping.

On Friday, China’s largest private shipbuilder appealed for financial help from the government and big shareholders after cutting its workforce and delaying payments to suppliers.

“Despite recent signs of bottoming out in domestic activity, growth outlook remains fragile,” said Tao Wang, UBS’s chief China economist.

As a result, the volume of excess reserves held at the Fed increased dramatically from less than $2 billion in 2008 to $1.8 trillion now. But the new Fed policy of paying interest on excess reserves meant that this increased availability of excess reserves did not lead after 2008 to much faster deposit growth and a much larger stock of money.

The size of the broad money stock (known as M2) grew at an average rate of just 6.2% a year from the end of 2008 to the end of 2012. While nominal GDP generally rises over long periods of time at the same rate as the money stock, with interest rates very low and declining, households and institutions were willing to hold more money relative to total nominal GDP after 2008. So, while M2 grew by more than 6%, nominal GDP grew by just 3.5% and the GDP price index rose by only 1.7%.

So it is not surprising that inflation has remained so moderate – indeed, lower than in any decade since the end of World War II. And it is also not surprising that quantitative easing has done so little to increase nominal spending and real economic activity.

The absence of significant inflation in the past few years does not mean that it won’t rise in the future. When businesses and households eventually increase their demand for loans, commercial banks that have adequate capital can meet that demand with new lending without running into the limits that might otherwise result from inadequate reserves. The resulting growth of spending by businesses and households might be welcome at first, but it could soon become a source of unwanted inflation.

The Fed could, in principle, limit inflationary lending by raising the interest rate on excess reserves or by using openmarket operations to increase the short-term federal funds interest rate. But the Fed may hesitate to act, or may act with insufficient force, owing to its dual mandate to focus on employment as well as price stability.

That outcome is more likely if high rates of long-term unemployment and underemployment persist even as the inflation rate rises. And that is why investors are right to worry that inflation could return, even if the Fed’s massive bond purchases in recent years have not brought it about. © Project Syndicate, 2013. www.project-syndicate.org

July 10 - 16, 2013

22 WORLD MARKETS financialmirror.com

Britain battles to build ‘Tech City’ as home grown talent goes West London tech hub seen as bright spot in flagging economy; But firms struggling to get funding beyond start-up stage East London’s technology hub is established well beyond startup status: thousands of new web firms now work in the offices around Old Street and on any given day the area’s coffee shops buzz with young hopefuls meeting advisers and investors.

Britain’s government has christened the area “Tech City” and makes no secret of its hope that the entrepreneurial ventures being dreamed up there can spearhead an economic boost to lift the country out of a long recession.

But its plan faces a major hurdle: the area touted as London’s answer to Silicon Valley has not produced a single big-name UKlisted company. Many firms are failing to secure second-round funding while the cream of the crop are being snapped up

by U.S. venture capitalists and top names like Yahoo , taking jobs and potential tax revenues with them.

Worried, the government has launched a string of policies to try to ensure that the best of British tech secures the funding and expertise it needs to grow inside the United Kingdom.

“We’ve lost a lot of our best and brightest businesses to the U.S.,” says Joanna Shields, who held management positions at Facebook, Google and Bebo and now runs the government’s Tech City Investment Organisation to encourage inward investment.

As part of the same push, Finance Minister George Osborne launched the “Future Fifty” project to share contacts and advice with companies looking to expand internationally. He has also cut capital gains tax for young businesses.

Prime Minister David Cameron is disappointed that Britain has not yet created a Google or an Amazon.

“I want to try and make sure that the next wave, and there will be a next wave, some of those are born and bred right here in Britain,” he said last month.

TALKING THE UK TALK

Securing seed money is relatively straightforward. Getting subsequent funding is where the real problems arise, says Simon Cook, chief executive of DFJ Esprit, an affiliate of California-based investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

“In America, if you start a company and show some progress, you are probably going to get another round,” said Cook. “In Europe, only one in five (companies) can raise any more money.”

The reason? Too many young British tech firms lack the skills to sell themselves as the big global names of the future.

“We see a lot of good companies which have a profitable business model... but either they are in a smaller niche or do not have the ambition to be global,” said Martin Mignot of European venture capital firm Index Ventures.

For Tom Blomfield it was his experience in the U.S. that helped him to secure backing for GoCardless, a company that enables more than 10,000 small businesses to accept direct debits. He spent

Integrated Reporting: Big business taking action to make reporting fit for reality As public sentiment towards business practices remains highly distrusting, some of the globe’s largest and most influential companies and investors have come together in a bid to promote more open and useful business reporting.

One hundred businesses across the globe, including Deutsche Bank, The Coca Cola Company, Natura, Unilever and Tata Steel, alongside leading investors, are all taking part in a pilot programme run by the International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC) to test and help develop the integrated reporting framework that aims to give a more informative view of a business. Business leaders from across this pilot programme network will meet in Frankfurt

four months at San Francisco’s prestigious Y Combinator, in effect a boot-camp for start-ups, and says it taught him that to succeed, a business must solve a problem.

“The thing that really validates your business is users paying for what you are selling, not some mentor telling you that your business plan looks great,” he said.

East London-based Unruly Media, which works with brands like Coca-Cola to get their ads viewed, shared and talked about on social networks, secured $25 mln last year from investors Amadeus, Van den Ende & Deitmers and Business Growth Fund. Cofounder Sarah Wood gave three reasons why investors wanted in: global reach, high revenue growth and proprietary technology.

Persuading firms to stay and grow at home needs more than policies offering advice and hand-holding. A dearth of British venture capital is a notable issue.

Technology investment is dominated by American venture capital firms, which are comfortable with the risks as well as the potential rewards of the sector, and thus reap returns to invest again.

British investors are more cautious and because few have a track record of success, continue to steer clear.

It’s a situation most ambitious British start-ups go along with

because of the prestige associated with U.S. involvement and mentoring. And while U.S. investment holds sway, U.S. listings dominate.

Right now payday lender Wonga and software firm Mimecast, both backed by venture capital firm Dawn Capital, are gearing up for stock listings in New York rather than in London. Social gaming company King.com, which has main offices in London and Stockholm, is also eying a U.S. IPO, according to a FT report.

In an attempt to break the cycle and keep talent at home, the London Stock Exchange set up a High Growth Segment this year, copying New York’s Nasdaq and letting entrepreneurs list 10% of their firms rather than the 25% normally required, so they can keep more control of their fast-growing businesses while they raise cash.

The scale of the challenge is significant. According to the London Stock Exchange, the 246 tech companies listed on Britain’s stock markets total $200 bln in capitalisation, compared with $3.2 trln in the U.S. Meanwhile, investment in London-based tech groups is falling, due possibly to a loss of appetite for the kind of consumer internet companies the city tends to produce. Some 24 London-based companies pulled in 62 mln pounds in the first quarter of 2013, less than half the 151 mln pounds raised by 29 companies in the final quarter of last year, research from market tracker Ascendant shows.

Nonetheless, says Index Ventures’ Mignot, London’s position is safe in the top tier of tech hubs, along with Silicon Valley and New York, and the city is fostering a healthy ecosystem of capital and talent.

“A lot of the ingredients are in place and the fact that the government is behind a move to make London more attractive for investors and entrepreneurs is likely to make it even better in the months and years to come.”

on June 18 and 19 to share insights and provide feedback on the framework, which is out for public comment until July 15 2013.

Integrated Reporting (IR), an approach for businesses to report on their value creation including financial and non-financial key performance indicators, is gaining traction with some of the world’s largest companies. Companies involved in the IIRC’s pilot programme say that they can now better judge the risks and opportunities of their businesses because IR facilitates a more holistic way of thinking and managing. According to a report by the IIRC and Black Sun last year, 93% of companies involved in the programme say that IR helps them to overcome silos between departments such as Strategy, Controlling, IT, Investor Relations, Finance, Sustainability, Corporate Communications and others.

98% agree that IR will lead to a better understanding of how the organisation creates value. 95% said IR also contributes to a better understanding of their business model and gives them the opportunity to focus on the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

But there is still a long way to go before the reality of company reporting catches up with the ambition, according to a PwC survey of the current reporting of large companies involved in the IIRC’s pilot programme.

The survey examined the reporting of 50 pilot companies that had already published reports by April 30 2013. It was conducted by the integrated reporting specialists at PwC in preparation for the two-day meeting they are hosting between the IIRC and global business leaders that have already begun to work with the basic principles of integrated reporting in their businesses. PwC is hosting the conference to facilitate sharing experiences with integrated reporting and discussing examples of how they are applying the principles.

Many businesses, not only the ones participating in the pilot programme, already use the structure, content elements, and terminology of the integrated reporting framework as a point of reference. Most businesses appreciate the competition among their peers as a driver for the further development of their reporting.

The benefits of IR that companies have identified include: - Valuable insights into strategy and corporate management; - Improvements to data quality and speed in collecting data; - Efficiencies – preparing only one integrated report instead of several reports such as an annual report and a sustainability report.

But Wood’s story is rare. The list of her promising British peers to have been bought out by established U.S. companies makes depressing reading for Cameron’s team. Internet radio station last. fm sold to CSB in 2007, while games firm Playfish was bought by Electronic Arts for about $300 mln in 2009. TweetDeck, a desktop for managing social media, was snapped up by Twitter in 2011 and Summly, an app founded by 17-year old Nick D’Aloisio, sold out to Yahoo for a rumoured $30 mln in March, only months after it launched.

U.S. INVESTMENT = U.S. LISTING

July 10 - 16, 2013

financialmirror.com GREECE

23

Eurozone grants multi-billion lifeline Athens to get staggered payments in 2013; Rehn says time to step up pace of reform Greece secured a lifeline from the euro zone and the IMF on Monday but was told it must keep its promises on cutting public sector jobs and selling state assets to get all the cash.

The 6.8 bln euro deal, which spares Greece defaulting on debt in August, will see Athens drip fed support under close watch from the euro zone and the IMF to ensure implementation of unpopular reforms. The tough approach underlines waning patience with Greece, which has been kept afloat on emergency funding since May 2010 but has failed to make all the difficult reforms demanded of it after a decade of living beyond its means.

«It’s time to step up the momentum of reform in Greece,» Olli Rehn, the European commissioner in charge of economic affairs, told a news conference in Brussels.

Keeping Greece in a hand-to-mouth existence, meanwhile, could threaten its bid to emerge from economic depression, with nearly two out of three young Greeks without work.

Thousands of municipal workers and school teachers took to the streets of Athens earlier on Monday in a noisy protest against public sector cuts.

Greece is expected to return to growth in 2014, albeit an anaemic 0.6%. Athens was counting on the money, one of the last big disbursements under its 240 bln euro bailout, to be paid out in one go. But it will now have to wait for much of the cash injection.

Even the first payment of 2.5 bln euros requires that Athens show creditors by July 19 that it is serious about cutting thousands of public sector jobs by the end of the year, as well as modernising the tax code.

Rehn denied that trickling out the funds would derail the recovery, but the economic situation is fragile.

Greece failed in June to attract any buyer for natural gas company DEPA as its plans to sell state assets fell well short of what its backers had demanded. Exports, investment and tourism have yet to show signs of a recovery.

Under the terms of Monday’s agreement, euro zone finance ministers and IMF head Christine Lagarde agreed to make staggered payments of aid to Greece starting with the 2.5 bln instalment that comes from euro zone countries.

The agreement foresees a further payment from euro zone countries of 500 mln euros in October.

Central banks in the Eurosystem will contribute 1.5 bln euros in July and 500 mln euros in October, by dishing out the profits that they and the European Central Bank made from the sale of Greek debt that they had held.

The IMF will give 1.8 bln euros in August.

Intralot extends OPAP deal Intralot announced the extension of the OPAP contract that provides for the implementation of OPAP’s new central system (implementation contract) with a timeframe of seven months and the support, maintenance and evolution of the new central system (service agreement) for the next five years.

In addition, Intralot will assume the maintenance of OPAP agencies’ infrastructure for the next two years and there is an option for three 1-year renewals, while it has also signed the extension of the current contract until the commencement of the new system. According to the company, the combined value of the implementation contract and the services agreement contract is EUR 101 mln, while it will also receive EUR 46 mln in the next two years for the maintenance of OPAP’s terminals, down by EUR 1 mln per year for each annual extension.

“We were not expecting the ratification of this contract so shortly so this was a pleasant surprise to us. However, we have already incorporated the terms and conditions of this contract in our numbers based on OPAP’s relevant announcement, but we should fine-tune our estimates due to the lower price for the implementation contract,” said Dimitris Birbos, analyst at the

Investment Bank of Greece.

“In general, this is a very positive development for the company as the renewal of the highly profitable OPAP contract for the next five years would provide more visibility over Intralot’s earnings outlook in the mid-term. On the other hand, the deadlock regarding the ratification of the supply agreements that are necessary for the operation of Hellenic State Lotteries (Intralot is a minor shareholder of the consortium that won the contract) remain intact at present.

“We reiterate that the ratification of the new contracts in Greece (OPAP contract, state lotteries concession) as well as the successful outcome of company’s efforts to address its debt maturities are evaluated as the key short-term catalysts for the stock,” Birbos added.

Meanwhile, OPAP’s new majority shareholder of, Emma Delta, has sent an extrajudicial document to the privatisation agency TAIPED relating to the signing of the supply agreements with the company’s junior partners (Intralot, Scientific Games) in the state lotteries consortium. Sources said that Emma Delta representatives visited OPAP and TAIPED to protest the move

Sale of (new) Hellenic Postbank Offers for the sale of Hellenic Postbank (TT) are expected to be submitted this week, with NBG, Alpha, Eurobank and several international funds among the interested parties while other sources suggest that Piraeus Bank might be also interested.

According to Kathimerini, Eurobank has the edge in the race, given that the troika believes that such a scenario would facilitate Eurobank’s privatisation, which is considered a priority. Accordingly, TT would constitute a strong asset and offer added value to Eurobank, which was the only bank being solely recapitalised by the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF). The same report argued that the Qatar investment fund and Oaktree (a US investment fund) were among the interested parties.

“TT has about EUR 11 bln of deposits and EUR 7 bln in loans, being one of the most liquid banks in the country. As a result, the acquisition of TT would improve the liquidity of the buyer while we also highlight that no details vis-à-vis TT’s price tag and / or the way of the acquisitions (new shares/cash and/or both) have being disclosed,” said Konstantinos Manolopoulos, analyst at the Investment Bank of Greece.

of the privatization agency to push the betting company to ratify the contract for the technology support of Hellenic State Lotteries which is evaluated as ‘an illegal and invalid agreement’.

“The ratification of the IT contract with Intralot is a positive development for OPAP as it will improve its operational efficiency, allow the provision of its existing games via internet, while there is a significant discount compared to the previous agreement. The failure of the privatisation of the State Lotteries would be a negative development for all sides (TAIPED, OPAP), so we view that OPAP’s management will work hard to conclude the deal in the next days. In general, we maintain our positive opinion for the stock in the mid-term,” said IBG’s Dimitris Birbos.

Retail index down 13% in April The turnover index in retail trade (excluding automotive fuel) dropped by 12.9% y-o-y in April, according to the Hellenic Statistical Authority, while the volume index (excluding automotive fuel) retreated by 13.5% y-o-y.

The turnover index in retail trade (including automotive fuel) fell by 14.7% y-o-y, while the retail trade volume index (including automotive fuel) decreased by 13.3% y-o-y in April. In the first four months of 2013, retail sales (excluding automotive fuel) posted a 12.4% y-o-y decline.

Retail sales in ‘clothing and footwear’ and ‘furniture-electrical equipmenthousehold equipment’ dropped by 8.2% y-o-y and 7.5% y-o-y, respectively, posting a significant improvement compared to the rate of decline in March, while the turnover in department stores decreased by 4.0% y-o-y in April. On a monthly basis, clothing/ footwear sales were up 37% m-o-m, while the turnover in household equipment and furniture increased by 18% m-o-m.

In the period Jan-April 2013, the turnover in department stores dropped 5.4% y-o-y, while the turnover in ‘furniture & household equipment’ and ‘clothing and footwear’ markets tumbled by 14.3% y-o-y and 10.6% y-o-y, respectively.

July 10 - 16, 2013

24 BACK PAGE financialmirror.com

For stocks, no need to fear good news WALL ST WEEK AHEAD Wall Street doesn’t hate good news after all.

The June jobs figures were stronger than expected and caused a big selloff in the bond market. That further underscored expectations that the Federal Reserve will be chopping back its big bondbuying program sooner rather than later. This kind of occurrence in the past would have caused the stock market to freak out. But the three major U.S. stock indexes climbed 1% on Friday, possibly pointing the way to more gains ahead.

The stock market has been in an odd spot for some time. Fear that the Federal Reserve would reduce its monthly bond-buying stimulus, designed to boost borrowing demand and help the U.S. economy, put investors in the position of rooting for just-OK data, the kind of figures that would keep the spigot open while still pointing to decent growth.

This report may have definitively changed that outlook. In June, 195,000 jobs were created - much stronger than the forecast for

165,000. Government data also showed that the U.S. labor force has increased for three straight months. The 10-year U.S. Treasury note’s yield jumped to a two-year high above 2.70% from 1.60% in a matter of weeks.

In that time, equities have barely budged. Sure, the S&P 500 has drifted off its all-time closing high of 1,669.16 reached on May 21. It is still less than 3% from that mark despite the sharp rise in interest rates. Light volume in the stock market, however, means that the move up should be taken with a grain of salt. And it makes the next several days that much more important.

“Good news is good news, but there’s so much uncertainty about how payrolls could impact markets,” said David Kelly, who helps oversee $400 bln as chief global strategist for JPMorgan Funds in New York. “The market is schizophrenic about this.”

Good news in the form of bullish economic data has recently been taken as a negative, causing market selloffs on the theory that it means the Federal Reserve will slow its stimulus. While comments from Fed officials helped relieve those concerns last week, June’s

strong payrolls data refocused investors’ attention on the uncertainty. The June nonfarm payrolls report raises the stakes for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who will be speaking on Wednesday before the National Bureau of Economic Research. Investors will closely scrutinize his comments for any hint about whether the jobs report could mean a faster end to the Fed’s bond-buying stimulus program.

Some strategists said the bond market’s selloff was in part because of thin volume exacerbating wild swings. Because of that, “it is unlikely that (yields) will rise any more than they already have,” said Alec Young, global equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ in New York. “That means that if we get good news, it will come without an accompanying rise in rates, which is great for stocks.”

Major signals for the market will come from areas with an outsized sensitivity to macroeconomic growth and higher interest rates.

Those areas have done relatively well since May 21, when the Dow and the S&P 500 ended at record highs. Small-cap stocks jumped in their best week since mid-May. The S&P 600 small-cap index shot up 1.5% on Friday to close at a new all-time high of 568.15.

Financial stocks were the strongest sector on Friday, with the S&P financial sector index up 1.8%. Regional banks such as SunTrust Banks were among the S&P 500’s biggest percentage gainers because those companies benefit from rising rates because it boosts their ability to profit from lending at higher rates while borrowing at lower rates.

IN SEARCH OF CLARITY

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release the minutes from its June 18-19 policy meeting. Those minutes are likely to attract heightened attention from Wall Street since they are coming out on the same day that Bernanke speaks to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The consensus on when the Fed will start cutting back its stimulus sits firmly in September of this year, with 11 of 16 primary dealers believing that, according to a Reuters poll, compared with seven of 17 in an earlier poll.

On May 22, Bernanke said the quantitative easing program would be slowed if economic growth met the Fed’s targets. Investors interpreted that as an indication of an early exit, sparking a steep slide in stocks and a surge in U.S. Treasury yields that prompted Goldman Sachs to close its recommendation that investors buy ratesensitive names. “The market is so inundated with voices from Fed officials - some far more reassuring than what we heard from Bernanke - that there’s a lot of confusion,” said Kristina Hooper, head of portfolio strategies at Allianz Global Investors in New York.

“Hearing him,” she added, “will settle things, especially on the heels of the jobs report. This is such a data-driven environment that to get a sense of how the Fed is viewing things is critical.”

Stocks have stabilized after the recent decline. On Friday, the S&P 500 closed above its 50-day moving average for the first time since June 19. For the past week, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.5%, the S&P 500 gained 1.6% and the Nasdaq jumped 2.2%.

The Fed probably will be the major driver for equities in the coming week, although geopolitical tensions will also be in focus. The unrest in Egypt has generated concerns about oil supply, pushing crude prices to 14-month highs.

Fundamentals will return to the forefront as companies begin to release second-quarter results this week. Expectations call for S&P 500 earnings growth to rise 1.6% in the second quarter from a year ago, while quarterly revenue is forecast to increase 2.9% from a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. Second-quarter revenue outlooks for S&P 500 companies - with three negative forecasts for every one that is positive - are among the most negative of the economic recovery, according to Thomson Reuters data.

“We think companies will exceed and beat that low bar. So while Bernanke can always change the conversation, we think the news flow should be decent,” S&P’s Young said.