Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-02-17

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Juncker to Tsipras: 'You're doing a good job with the refugee crisis'

[02] Greek companies' sales up 0.5 pct in 2015, ICAP report

[01] Juncker to Tsipras: 'You're doing a good job with the refugee crisis'

Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas then tweeted Juncker's welcoming comment: "Juncker welcomes @tsipras_eu: "You're doing a good job with the refugee crisis. Keep it up!"

The meeting between the two officials is underway.

[02] Greek companies' sales up 0.5 pct in 2015, ICAP report

In a report, conducted on a sample of 753 enterprises (excluding banks-insurance) which have released their annual balance sheets (for the fiscal year ending in June 30, 2015) for the last two years, Icap said this improvement reflected exclusively a good performance of the commerce sector, while manufacturing and services companies suffered small pre-tax losses. In general, six out of 10 companies were profitable while the remaining four were loss-making. From the 753 companies in the report, 315 were manufacturing, 189 commercial, 299 were services companies and the remaining came from the tourism and construction sectors.

Nikitas Konstantellos, chief executive of ICAP Group, commenting on the report said that the Greek economy remained on a painful adjustment road in the last few years, operating in conditions of unprecedented recession. In 2015 and early 2015 the first positive performance was recorded, as reflected in a 0.7 pct rise in the country's GDP in 2014 and positive growth rates in the first half of 2015. He added that the imposition of capital controls and political uncertainty burdened economic sentiment in the country pushing Greek GDP back to negative rates in the third and fourth quarter of 2015, a trend prevailing in the first two months of 2016.

The manufacturing sector showed that sales remained almost unchanged at 1.71 billion euros in 2015, with gross earnings rising by 4.8 pct. Net results showed a loss of 3.9 million euros in 2015, down almost 90 pct from the previous year, while EBITDA grew 18 pct. From the 215 manufacturing companies included in the report, 127 were profitable (77.7 million euros in earnings) and 88 were loss-making (81.5 million euros in losses).

The commerce sector showed an 1.9 pct increase in sales, pre-tax earnings grew 4.4 pct to 112.7 million euros and EBITDA rose 7.5 pct. From the 189 commercial companies in the report, 121 were profitable (132.5 million in profits) and 68 were loss-making (19.9 million euros in losses).

The services sector showed a 0.9 pct decline in sales, while gross earnings remained unchanged and EBITDA fell by 5.4 pct. From a total of 299 companies in the report, 183 were profitable (with 58.1 million in profits) and 116 were loss-making (with 63.5 million in losses).

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