Israel has expressed interest in the upcoming privatizations of EYDAP and EYATh. the water and sewage treatment utilities of Athens and Thessaloniki, respectively, through its ambassador to Greece.
Ambassador Arie Mekel was speaking at a conference on water availability organized by the Ministry of the Environment, in the presence of miinister Yannis Maniatis and deputy minister Stavros Kalafatis.
The willingness of the two countries to closely cooperate on issues of water management was reaffirmed during the conference, as were the close ties between the two countries.
As was announced, PM Antonis Samaras will be visiting Israel in October, accompanied by six ministers and 100 Greek businesmen, in order to examine possibilities in technology exchange and collaboration in water reclamation projects, among other areas of interest.

The Greek Finance Ministry has announced that the state budget is showing a 3 billion euro primary surplus within the first 8 months of 2013.

According to the ministry, the surplus is mainly due to the transfer of returns from Greek bonds from the Central Banks of the Eurozone, to the tune of 1.5 billion euros and to the increase in revenues by 5.9% against targets set, mainly because of indirect taxes.

Deputy finance minister Christos Staikouras noted that a surplus of 2.9 billion euros was registered for the first eight months of 2013, against a deficit of 1.4 billion during the same period last year. The target was for a surplus of 2.5 billion euros.

The Finance Ministry was also pleased with tax revenues, which came in at 4.3 billion euros for August. This was 400 million euros over the target set. Revenues from indirect taxes beat their target by 26.5 percent and offset the poor performance from income tax.