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Friday, July 20, 2012
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State alone needs €4.5b says Shiarly Finance minister predicts deal with troika by autumn By Elias Hazou
T
HE state needs some €4.5 billion just to refinance its debt, Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly said yesterday, predicting that a deal with the troika on an EU bailout could be clinched by early autumn. Cyprus formally applied for financial support from its EU partners last month, becoming the fifth member in the eurozone to do so because of a runaway budget deficit and its banks’ vast exposure to Greek sovereign debt. Inspectors from the troika - the European Commission, the IMF and European Central Bank – are due back on the island next week to continue gathering data on the government’s accounts and on the recapitalisation requirements of commercial banks. The officials would stay here for about 10 days, Shiarly said. After that, talks between them and authorities would continue via teleconferencing sessions. “On September 14, there will take place in Cyprus an informal meeting of ECOFIN, which will give us a chance to talk [with our EU partners]. I anticipate that, after that date, we could close the subject,” the minister said, alluding
to a bailout agreement. Bailouts must be approved by all 17 eurozone members. On the banks, Shiarly said it was too early to say how much cash they’d need. The amount of recapitalisation would be determined jointly with the troika, he said. The official line so far has been that the island’s two largest lenders – Bank of Cyprus and Popular – need at least a combined €2.3 billion. But that sounds too conservative compared to numbers quoted very recently by both European officials and ratings agencies. Earlier this week, Standard and Poor’s said €4.48 billion would be needed to sufficiently recapitalise the damaged banking sector in accordance with the standards set by the European Banking Authority. On the government’s requirements, S&P said €6.59 billion of additional financing would be needed between 2012 and 2014 for both “the underlying budget deficit plus the amount of (government) debt maturing.” The ratings service estimated the total cost of Cyprus’ rescue package from the EU would exceed €15 billion or 83 per cent of total GDP. Responding to reporters’
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Sailboats parade yesterday in the Crozon Bay, western France, during the 2012 “Tonnerres de Brest” maritime festival, which featured thousands of traditional sailboats (AFP)
Text me, say Britons too busy to make phonecalls BRITONS prefer to text friends or keep in touch on Facebook rather than chat on the phone, leading to the first ever decline in mobile voice calls, according to the UK’s telecoms regulator. The average consumer now sends 50 texts a week, a number that has doubled in four years, with over 150 billion text messages sent in
2011, Ofcom said in its annual Communications Market Report. They also spend almost an hour and a half a week using email, on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, or using a mobile to access the Internet, while fewer calls were made on both fixed-line and mobile phones. The amount of time spent
talking on the phone fell by 5 per cent in 2011, the survey said, reflecting a 10 per cent drop in the volume of calls from landlines and, for the first time, a fall in mobile calls, by just over 1 per cent. Unsurprisingly, young people are leading the charge, despite saying they prefer to talk face to face. Some 96 per cent of 16- to
24-year-olds use a text-based application to keep in touch with friends and family daily, it found, with 90 per cent sending texts and 73 per cent using social networking sites. The change in habits went hand in hand with rising numbers of smartphones, which make accessing the Internet on the move easier.