A last-minute Russian pullout from a major gas privatization has blown a huge hole in Greece’s yearly revenue goals during an audit by EU-IMF creditors, raising questions over deficit management in the next six months.
Russian giant Gazprom declined on Monday to table an offer for Greek state gas distributor DEPA, citing concerns about the company’s financial viability.
As Gazprom was the sole expected bidder, the tender automatically collapsed and will be redrawn.
It had been hoped that the DEPA sale would raise at least 700 million euros (US$912 million), about a quarter of the money Greece needs in privatization proceeds this year under its EU-IMF bailout goals.
The setback came during a scheduled audit of Greek reforms by a creditor mission from the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank, the so-called troika.
Greek media yesterday reported that the DEPA hole would likely bring more fiscal measures which the country’s embattled coalition government had hoped to avoid until at least next year.
“The deficit will be made up with spending cuts and new taxes,” leftist Eleftherotypia daily said.
“There is now a possibility that the government will be asked to adopt new measures ... or bring forward other privatizations slated for 2014,” conservative daily Eleftheros Typos said.
Gazprom said on Monday that it was worried by steep unpaid bills owed to DEPA by independent electricity producers and industry.
However, there are also strong signs that the EU had reservations about the sale as Gazprom is a key gas supplier to Greece.
“We did not receive adequate guarantees that DEPA’s financial situation will not deteriorate until the deal is concluded,” Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said.
“The takeover procedure could last another year after the end of the tender,” he added. “The company is already burdened with unpaid customer bills.”
Fellow Russian firm Sintez likewise held back bidding on DEPA subsidiary DESFA, the Greek gas transmission system operator.
The Russian pullout poured cold water on a positive period for Greece when it was building up praise from international officials for its progress on enacting austerity and structural reforms.
Greece’s privatization drive has had a slow start and revenue goals have been repeatedly scaled back since it began in 2010. The state privatization agency has also changed three managers in less than a year.
Greece must raise 2.6 billion euros in asset sales this year.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS