In Brief
Intralot mulls Camelot stake, says CEO Intralot, the world’s second-largest lottery systems provider, is considering buying a stake in Britain’s national lottery operator Camelot, the Greek company’s chief executive said yesterday. Citing sources close to the potential deal, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper had said on Sunday that Cadbury Plc and Thales SA, two of Camelot’s five shareholders, had been approached by potential buyers for their stake in Camelot. Each holds a 20 percent stake in Camelot. «We will be interested to see the terms of the sale, whether they are interesting, and we will then decide,» Intralot’s chief executive, Constantinos Antonopoulos, told Reuters. «We know the British (lottery) market very well.» The newspaper said the sale would start this month. (Reuters) Bobov Dol power plant plans new units SOFIA (Reuters) – The new owner of Bulgaria’s Bobov Dol thermal power plant, Bulgarian Consortium Energia MK, plans to build two new 200-megawatt units, it said yesterday. The consortium, which consists of a group of coal mines, signed a contract to buy the 630-megawatt coal-fired power plant in western Bulgaria for 100 million levs ($74.96 million). «There is a possibility to build two new units of 200 megawatts each,» said Hristo Kovachki, a senior partner in the consortium. «There are 500-600 million tons of coal in southwestern Bulgaria.» Two previous attempts to sell the outdated generator to Greece’s Public Power Corp. failed mainly due to miners’ protests, who feared the Greek company would not use their coal. Bulgaria surplus Bulgaria’s budget surplus widened to 4.2 billion levs ($3.15 billion) in the first seven months of 2008 compared to a year earlier, according to data that showed the government was on track to meet its fiscal goals. The surplus in the year-to-end July compared with the surplus of 2.4 billion levs reported for the same period in 2007 and was equivalent to 6.5 percent of the expected gross domestic product (GDP) for 2008, the Finance Ministry said. While spending is expected to pick up in the remaining five months of the year, the government looked set to meet, or better, its annual fiscal surplus target of 3.0 percent. Total fiscal revenue in the first seven months of 2008 stood at 16.4 billion levs, amounting to 60.5 percent of the annual budget plan, while spending was at 12.2 billion levs, or 48.2 percent of the annual plan, the data showed. (Reuters) Romanian growth The Romanian economy grew 9.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, its fastest rate in almost four years, as strong domestic consumption defied a downturn in western Europe. The release beat analysts’ expectations for 7.8 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and was stronger than the 8.2 percent reported in the first quarter. Analysts said the data strengthened the case for another rise in Romanian interest rates to cool rampant spending and credit growth. It also increased the chances of the centrist government drawing on enhanced tax revenues to raise welfare spending ahead of the November parliamentary election. This, in turn, could put further upward pressure on rates. (Reuters)
