Finance Minister Harris Georgiades has said that a roadmap for the privatisation of semi government enterprises will go ahead as scheduled and will probably be ready by the end of next month, as unions threatened to respond with “mass and combative” mobilisation.

The Finance Ministry has chosen the audit and advisory firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young) to carry out a fair value assessment of the island’s Cooperative credit institutions (Co-ops), a term of the a €1.5bn capital injection given by the state to cover their estimated capital shortfall.

Officials have denied that Noble Energy, operators of the Block 12 offshore licence, has reportedly asked for a ‘time-out’ in talks on a mooted gas liquefaction terminal here.

Development is the key to pulling the country out of the recession, big developers have said, following a meeting with President Nicos Anastasiades.

Hellenic Bank has reported a third quarter net loss of €87.2 million as net income dropped and provisions for non performing loans (NPLs) more than doubled compared with Q3 2012.

The Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) is satisfied with the increase in tourist arrivals in October as well as the increase in revenue in the previous two months.

Cyprus is likely to completely lift state controls on capital movement within months, finance minister Harris Georgiades told Reuters.

The decline in Cyprus’ economy slowed in the third quarter of the year as tourism gave the island a brief respite and seasonal lift.

Hydrocarbon reserves in the eastern Mediterranean were the focus of the 2013 Annual Conference of the PRIO Cyprus Center (Peace Research Institute Oslo) that was held in Nicosia.

The new president of the Cyprus Cooperative Central Bank (CCB), Nicolas Hadjiyiannis, said that immediate priorities include the appointment of a new chief executive and the drafting of a roadmap by the end of November which is a requirement set out by the Memorandum with the Troika of international lenders.