Latest news with #AngelikiKoutantou
The Star
22-04-2025
- Business
- The Star
Greek financial technology provider Qualco plans Athens listing
ATHENS -Greece-based financial technology provider Qualco plans to launch an initial public offering to list its shares on the Athens Stock Exchange, it said on Tuesday. Qualco, which offers software for the credit industry andhas operations in more than 30 countries, aims to raise up to 70 million euros from the share offering and use the proceedsto finance acquisitions in Greece or abroad and help grow its business, it said. (Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Writing by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Tom Hogue)
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Thousands protest in Athens as strike over wages halts ships, planes and trains
By Angeliki Koutantou and STAMOS PROUSALIS ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of Greeks gathered in Athens on Wednesday to demand higher wages to cope with rising living costs and a one-day strike left ferries docked at ports, flights grounded and trains at a standstill. Along with air traffic controllers, seafarers and train workers, municipal workers and bus and metro workers in the capital also walked out. Greece has emerged from a 2009-2018 debt crisis which led to rolling cuts in wages and pensions in turn for bailouts worth some 290 billion euros. Economic growth, seen at a 2.3% this year, is now outpacing other eurozone economies. The conservative government has increased the monthly minimum wage by a cumulative 35% to 880 euros since 2019. But many households still struggle to make ends meet amid fast-rising food, power and housing costs, Greece's largest labour unions say. "The workers' salary only gets us through the 10th or the 15th day of the month, it cannot cover basic needs, such as housing and food, education and health," said private sector workers' representative Dina Gkogkaki, 52, who joined the protests in the central Syntagma Square on Wednesday. The General Confederation of Greek Workers, which represents more than 2 million private sector employees, says that Greek workers are buying 10% fewer goods compared to 2019 due to inflation and has called for substantial pay rises and collective labour contracts. Greece's minimum salary in terms of purchasing power was among the lowest in the European Union in January, behind Portugal and Lithuania, Eurostat data showed. At 1,342 euros a month, the average gross salary still stands 10% lower than in 2010, when Greece signed up to its first bailout, according to labour ministry data. The country is outperforming its 2% primary surplus targets, leaving some room for some wage increases, but the government says it must be fiscally prudent to limit interest levied on its debt, which is still the highest in the euro zone. It has promised to bring the minimum wage up to 950 euros by 2027, as it targets an average gross monthly salary of 1,500 euros, closer to the EU average. But monthly expenses for food, utilities and housing have been growing fast. "It's a gap that keeps getting bigger because of price hikes and inflation that affects energy and medicines," said Angelos Galanopoulos from the Seafarers Union. Public sector workers, who were hit by measures to reduce a spendthrift state, have joined the strike, demanding annual bonuses that were scrapped over the past decade. "Our wages are stuck at 2011 levels, without Christmas and Easter bonuses, and sometimes without proper working rights," said Diana Liakou, 58, a kindergarten tutor. Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis told an economic conference in Delphi, Greece that he shared Greek workers' concerns, but that reducing taxation was still a key priority for the government.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Greek feta producers fret over exports after US tariffs
By Angeliki Koutantou KALAVRITA, Greece (Reuters) - A small cooperative of 1,200 stock breeders producing feta, Greece's trademark white soft cheese, in the southern Peloponnese peninsula had one big target this year: a market foray in the United States. Back in 2019, the country managed to get feta exempted from U.S. tariffs imposed on European goods. But President Donald Trump's move on Wednesday to slap a 10% tariff on most goods imported to the United States has cast a shadow on their plans. European Union, a close ally, was not spared, facing 20% reciprocal tariff rates. "What share of that (duties) will go to the final consumer... where the roulette ball will land, remains to be seen," said the general manager of the cooperative, Konstantinos Latsis, from inside the dairy's cold room housing 6,000 beech barrels where feta ripens in brine for at least two months. The cooperative, one of the many producers of the salty sheep cheese supplies the Greek market with some 5,000 tonnes of barrel and tin-aged feta annually from its plant in Kalavrita. Greece has been making feta, a protected EU trademark since 2022, for over 6,000 years. It produced some 140,000 tonnes of feta last year worth 800 million euros. Some 8% of the exports reached the United States - the volume doubled in four years. Now, Greek dairies exporting feta to the fast-growing U.S. market anticipate that tariffs could at least halve those exports. "I'm afraid feta will not find a way out of these tariffs this time," said Christos Apostolopoulos, head of Greece's association of dairy industries. "We have to figure it out, how to divert these quantities to other markets." Despite the new U.S. duties, the Kalavrita cooperative still bets on its expansion overseas. "We are optimistic that, no matter what - because this is a very big market - we will be able to slowly enter it," Latsis said.
