French giant TOTAL and the Cyprus government are expected to put pen to paper over an amended deal for offshore plot 11 of the island’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

The trade deficit narrowed to €94.8 mln in January 2015, compared to €300 mln in December 2014, which saw the past year close at a wider €3.7 bln.

Construction companies want VAT reduced to 5.0% and other incentives in a bid to stimulate the flagging sector.

In a bid to rein in its non performing loans, the Housing Finance Corporation (HFC) will hire additional staff to handle arrears, the organisation’s chairman Loizos Papacharalambous told MPs recently.

US-based Noble Energy will declare gas reserves discovered offshore Cyprus commercially viable by the end of March 2015, the government said recently.

The ENI-KOGAS consortium will announce soon the results of their exploratory drilling at the offshore Amathusa prospect, energy minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis said recently.

Natural gas from the Aphrodite gas field can be channelled to Cyprus for domestic energy consumption as well as to regional exports, the head of theCyprus Hydrocarbons Company (CHC) Toula Onoufriou said recently.

Cyprus is on the verge of moving from natural gas exploration to exploitation, Minister of Energy Giorgos Lakkotrypis said addressing the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Conference.

Without legislation to recoup non-performing loans, it will take ten years to deal with the extent of bad loans at the island’s banks, according to a report in the Financial Times (FT).

The Finance Ministry said it further relaxed capital controls introduced following the March 2013 banking crisis.