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The Regions This Week
July 19, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Southeast Europe
Montenegro’s government decided to revise its budget plan for 2019, including the possibility to issue a €500mn Eurobond to refinance maturing debt.
The EU will start unblocking financial aid to Moldova, with the first payment expected almost immediately, EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn announced. The EU is throwing its weight behind the new government in Moldova, led by Maia Sandu of the pro-EU ACUM alliance.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) and Germany’s ProCredit Group are providing an additional €800mn to innovative SMEs mainly in Southeast Europe, bringing the total funding to €1.62bn for companies in eleven countries. The financing will be available through ProCredit banks in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine.
US oil and gas group ExxonMobil plans to pull out of its offshore gas project in Romania, local news portal G4media.ro reported. ExxonMobil
has invested some $700mn in the Neptun Deep project in Romania’s Black Sea section, mainly for drilling several exploration wells in the perimeter.
Home sales in Turkey collapsed in June, falling by a sharp 49% on an annual basis to 61,355 units, extending the contraction in the market to a sixth consecutive month. Istanbul, the country’s richest city, saw a 51% decline in home sales in the month from a year ago to 10,000 units while the housing market in the capital Ankara contracted 55% with only 5,000 units sold.
South Korean producer of electrical parts for the automotive industry Yura Corporation started the construction of a factory in the southwest Alba- nian city of Fier, an investment of €13mn.
State-owned consulting and engineering company DRI Investment Management (DRI) will
temporarily take control of Slovenia’s Maribor Airport after the withdrawal of the Chinese concessionaire. Chinese company SHS Aviation terminated the contract after a disagreement
with the infrastructure ministry over the economic model for the management of the airport.
There are four potential bidders for Telekom Slovenije’s Kosovan subsidiary Ipko, Fitch Solutions wrote, naming Telekom Srbija, Austrian A1 Group, United Group and Bulgarian Vivacom’s controlling shareholder businessman Spas Roussev. The planned sale Ipko is the latest example of the tendency towards consolidation
in the Balkan telecoms sector.
The government of the Muslim-Croat Federation has agreed to secure six more months state
aid for Bosnia’s troubled aluminium smelter Aluminij, allowing it to resume work, Indikator. ba reported. Aluminij was forced to stop work on July 10 as the power supply from Elektroprivreda HZHB was cut off, after repeated warnings over the smelter's unpaid debts to its electricity supplier.
Turkey's banking system has avoided a hard currency liquidity crunch since last August’s Turkish lira crisis, partly thanks to FX deposit inflows, but refinancing risks remain high, Fitch Ratings said.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic proposed a reshuffle of his government, with six new ministers to be appointed. The reshuffle was announced shortly after two ministers resigned following media revelations that raised questions about past property deals.
North Macedonia's government decided to discharge nearly 70 directors and managers of state institutions and companies. This is part of the operation “Broom” to eliminate weaknesses in the government, the ruling SDSM party as well as in public companies, agencies and institutions.