Another emir woos the Athenian Riviera In the knowledge of the prime minister’s office, cross-referenced information in the column is the most serious interest shown by a strong state investment group from the United Arab Emirates for a tourist complex of the Athenian Riviera. No, it’s not about Star Vouliagmenis since he’s already in the hands of Arab investment groups. This is a well-discussed tourist complex that has been in the news for years. That’s all for now. Knowers say the proposal put forward values the complex at levels close to two billion euros. No, we’re not overreacting. So warm is the international investment interest in luxurious tourist complexes in our country. The draft Capital Market Act in the cabinet “Since you have an organized market you have to support it,” bank officials say on the occasion of the new draft Capital Market Act to be discussed at today’s cabinet meeting. The same banking executives make it clear, however, that they do not expect an explosion of public registrations on the Greek stock exchange despite any incentives currently envisaged or will apply by passing the new bill. Worldwide public registrations are limited, while a number of companies come out of stock exchanges. The market currently provides a multitude of different and more attractive instruments for financing investments, compared with the introduction into an organised market. The reduction in the cost of admission and residence on the Athens Stock Exchange is a positive measure and can attract some smaller companies. But Europe’s great stake is the creation of a large single market and the negotiation of shares. Some people will say a cheating dream. Until then, the government is doing right and is promoting measures to gain more depth and more businesses our small organized market! The lone horseman of waste management After the wave of acquisitions of the last two years in waste management (Watt passed to the cement industry Hercules, Thales and Elector in the Motor Oil group, etc.) there is a stand-alone player, not belonging to a large group, the Mediterranean of the Georgopoulos family. In fact, the latter bought back the percentage that the Lascaridis family had resulting in control of all the shares and gain even greater autonomy and flexibility. Mediterranean CEO Dionysis Georgopoulos is on the board of the subsidiary Mediterranean Islands founded a few weeks ago with almost the same object as the parent company. 50% of the Mediterranean Islands owns Green Tech Technical Monoface SA which is a subsidiary of the Mediterranean and the remaining 50% Mr. George Seraphim. The parking bonus and the bomb for the counselors! The column raises a question and awaits an answer. Parking, i.e. transferring resources from the Recovery Fund to a body’s coffer without reaching the market, is included in the achievement of objectives of the competent department of the Ministry of Finance and allows the success bonuses to be granted to executives? We write this because every year the responsible government officials announce the achievement of absorption targets by parking valuable funds. In the report – a catapult of the Court of Auditors on the Recovery Fund, which we dealt with yesterday, there is also something else that must concern the government. That expensive consultants, the well-known Big-5 and some other consultants who were abruptly blown over the last five years, for the “acceleration” of the Fund do not seem to put substantial backs. The Court of Auditors’ report states in particular that “the entities involved have recourse to contracts with private contractors (technical advisers), whose supporting role has not prevented the misuse of project monitoring procedures…”. Disputing Papastergiou and Kavalakis about the Recovery Fund The most interesting points in the Court of Auditors’ report on the Recovery Fund are, however, in the Annexes. There, in the comments of the bodies on the report we learn that the commander of the Orestes Cavallakis Recovery Fund does not adopt the observations of the audit. On the contrary, the agency headed by Mr. Cavallakis “expresses its satisfaction at the overall monitoring of the development of projects and the ESAAA as a whole”. Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou, however, has another view. Probably because man runs and does not arrive with services and agencies since many projects of the Recovery Fund concern digitizations and technology projects. In his reply to the Court of Auditors, Mr Papastergiou says that the report “as we have seen, accurately reflects the current situation”! Should the two major factors be coordinated to absorb the critical funds? The Court of Auditors notes that while the Recovery Fund finances green and digital projects, its monitoring is not done at all digitally! As noted in the report, “in the majority of controlled projects, the progress of their implementation is being monitored extrasystemically, except OPSA”. That is, without using the “Complete Recovery Fund Information System” paid by taxpayers. The report refers to ‘manual procedures, lack of communication protocols, the possibility of producing combined reports, mandatory fields to supplement the relevant forms and automated notifications’ which affect the effectiveness of the OPS ‘in terms of preventing and addressing the risk of delays’. Because Skylakis sees cheaper current this year The average annual wholesale price in electricity declined last year by about 10% compared to 2023. Energy Minister, Theodore Skylakakis, estimates that this year he will have a new fall for the benefit of consumers. As he recently said, he does not consider that fears of more expensive gas will be verified this year. On the contrary, the Minister expects normalisation in Europe with the help of new quantities of LNG to be released on the market gradually thereafter. As natural gas determines to a significant extent the corresponding electricity prices, logic says they will follow the same course. But there is another positive parameter: Green energy. As our country is installing more and more wind and photovoltaics, which produce electricity against low costs, as time goes by, our electricity becomes more economical overall. We should, however, add to the above that Mr.Skylakis’s prediction last year was not easily verified in the end due to the well-known “mini” energy crisis that has hit our region since July. The average price of 2024 in the current eventually fell mainly as a result of the very favourable conditions of the first semester, otherwise the minister would have “falled out”. The majority of climate risks aren’t insured, and… does it follow? Climate change and the destructive phenomena that accompany it are an unstable factor in the international economy, in general, but also in the area of insurance, in particular. This is because, as the EUPM says in its report, “climate change can make certain risks uninsured”, exacerbating the situation in a market that, “already, 75% of risks are not insured”. And the course of things only for the better does not go, as in 2023 it was recorded as the hottest year and is expected even more extreme temperatures and phenomena, the more “deep” in the climate crisis. For only 2023, compensation to insured persons for damage caused by natural disasters is estimated to have reached 97.7 billion euros worldwide, while damage is valued at 253.4 billion euros. There is, therefore, an insurance gap of EUR 155.7 billion worldwide, which, if not covered by insurance companies, is covered by the state budgets… However, the government made sure that last year it was paying a premium for housing and business insurance with a reduction in the FDA. A similar arrangement to that which had been attempted to pass in 2022, for compulsory housing insurance against climate disasters, but had eventually withdrawn due to company reactions. The problem, then, was that housing insurance was requested in areas of high vulnerability, and when a risk is considered to be too intimidating to materialise, insurance companies consider it uninsured. Clearing the limit between insurance and non-insurance risks, between governments and insurance companies, is also the essence of all the debate over the years ahead and as long as the climate crisis rages. In the bars the short-term rental property owners once again Yesterday in newssit.gr we wrote about how it “changes the landscape in short term leases” with the bill which was filed in Parliament by the Ministry of Tourism. This is because the conditions for these properties are being tightened up, with provisions that can even lead to the withdrawal of thousands of licences. The property owners have already climbed into the… “gagels”. The Association of Real Estate Short-time Hire Companies (Stama) mentions unconstitutionality and asks for the provisions to be withdrawn. Similarly, the Panhellenic Federation of Property Owners (POMIDA) expresses its own concerns and the Panhellenic Association of Real Estate Managers (PASYDA) also denounces the regulation. The contested provision is that which provides that, in order to make the property available to short-term leases, it should be declared from the outset as dwellings, or, at least, a change of use has taken place by July 2011. Practically, this means that all former stores, warehouses, offices, crafts (seeking extremely common, especially in urban centers such as Athens), which in these 14 years were converted into AirBnb-type accommodation, are thrown out of short term rental and even, with retroactive effect. With them and with them, frictions between government and property owners continue in 2025 at unrestrained rates, after and from last year’s “sirial” with the three-year tax exemption.
The emir who sees the Athenian Riviera, the lone horseman of waste management, the parking bonus and the bomb for the consultants of the Recovery Fund and the provisions of Skylaki on electricity prices
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