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The Regions This Week
February 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Southeast Europe
Moldova’s financial markets supervisor took control of a 64% stake in the country’s second- largest bank Moldindconbank, previously con- trolled by non-transparent shareholders. The regulator is now seeking a new investor to take over the stake as Chisinau aims to clean up the banking sector.
Chinese mining firm Zijin Mining is interested in investing in Serbian copper smelting and mining complex RTB Bor, the Chinese company's board president Chen Jinghe said. State-owned RTB Bor is currently one of the largest burdens on Serbia’s budget.
Unilever agreed to buy Romania’s largest ice- cream producer Betty Ice. This would be the second significant transaction on the Romanian ice cream market, estimated at €150mn, in recent years.
Bulgaria has to increase its efforts in the fight against corruption and organised crime to exit the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), the European Union’s justice commission- er Vera Jourova said. Bulgaria has been strongly criticised by EU institutions for its lack of progress in fighting corruption.
Albanian opposition parties held a mass protest
aiming to topple the Socialist-led government, which they accused of corruption. The protest was organised by the centre-right Democratic Party and supported by the Socialist Movement for Integration.
Hundreds of residents of the Kosovan capital Pristina protested against the high level of pol- lution in the city. The city authorities took meas- ures such as banning cars from central Pristina, as air pollution reportedly soared to among the highest levels in the world.
Macedonia's idled ferro-nickel plant Feni is ex- pected to resume operations in February, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Koso An- gjusev said. Kavadarci-based Feni Industry once
was one of the country's major exporters, but was crippled by low nickel prices on world markets.
Romanian oil and gas company OM Petrom Group is investing €18mn in a fuel depot in the western city of Arad. OMV Petrom is the largest integrated oil and gas group in Southeast Europe, with an annual oil and gas production of approxi- mately 64 mn boe in 2016.
Serbia’s central bank withdrew permission for lender AIK banka to increase its stake in Slo- venia’s Gorenjska banka. The National Bank of Serbia said it took the step after finding irregulari- ties in the operations of AIK, majority-owned by businessman Miodrag Kostic.
Industrial producer prices on Bosnia & Herze- govina’s domestic market increased 3.1% y/y in December, after rising 3.5% y/y in November, data from the country’s statistics office showed on January 26. In monthly terms, the industrial PPI rose 0.2% in December, after going up 2% in November.
The Croatian currency is under heavy apprecia- tion pressure and the central bank will continue to buy euros from commercial banks in order to prevent its strengthening, the governor of the cen- tral bank Boris Vujcic said. Last year, the Croatian central bank intervened five times on the foreign exchange market.
GDP in Serbia increased by a real 2.5% y/y in the fourth quarter of 2017, the Serbian Statisti- cal Office announced in a flash estimate. Serbia’s economy was expected to exceed 3% annual growth in 2017, but this now looks unlikely as the agriculture sector was hit by drought.
The number of foreign tourists visiting Montenegro increased by 43.8% y/y to 23,410 in December, the statistics office reported. Montenegro is expecting tourism revenue to exceed €1.5bn a year by 2026.