News

  Dubai / Emirates Business While the property market appears to be simultaneously booming and crashing, depending on which statistic you follow, or which article you read, one source reports a remarkable increase in the property market arena. compareit4me.com, the region’s leading finance comparison site, has confirmed that mortgage enquiries have rocketed from January 2015 to April 2016. According to ...

  REUTERS Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Russia’s Zarubezhneft recently for a feasibility study on two joint fields in the west of the country, according to oil ministry news agency SHANA. It is the latest of several MoUs the ministry has signed since the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran in January. Countries seeking long-term oil cooperation ...

  REUTERS National Bank of Oman (NBO), the sultanate’s third-largest lender by assets, beat analysts’ expectations on Thursday despite posting flat growth in second-quarter net profit, according to Reuters calculations. The lender made a net profit of 15.46 million rials ($40.2 million) in the three months to June 30, Reuters calculated based on previous financial statements in lieu of a ...

  REUTERS Italy’s state railways company expects to sign a contract to build the first stretch of a high-speed rail line in Iran in February 2017, its chief executive said on Thursday. The contract for the roughly 100 km-stretch between Qom and Arak is worth about 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), Ferrovie dello Stato <IPO-FERRO.MI> chief Renato Mazzoncini said at ...

  WAM The British-based mining company Savannah Resources has announced that it has appointed two new directors to reflect a 1.7 million pound investments made by Al Marjan Limited. According to Mozambique News Agency, AIM, Savannah has rights to three blocks in the copper-rich Semail Ophiolite Belt in the Sultanate of Oman. Its strategy is centred on building a copper ...

  BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq, pressured by lower-than-expected oil prices, will cut non-oil spending in its 2016 budget by 15 percent and take on several billion dollars in international debt, it said in a memo which the International Monetary Fund released on Thursday. OPEC’s second-largest producer, which relies on oil exports for nearly all its revenue, has sought donor support ...

  Riyadh / TNS Saudi Arabia, represented by the Ministry of Education and the King Abdul Aziz Foundation for Talent and Creativity (Mawhiba), is due to participate in three international competitions in mathematics, physics and chemistry from the fourth to the 27th of Shawwal 1437 AH in Hong Kong, Switzerland and Georgia. Saudi Arabia is competing in the International Olympiad of ...

  WAM The total revenues of Saudi Customs in the last fiscal year 1436 AH (2015 AD) amounted to SR 29.8 billion, an increase of 9 percent compared to 2014, including SR3.06 billion incurred by the state as part of the support for some imported goods. According to the Saudi Press Agency, SPA, the recently issued annual report of the ...

  Bloomberg India’s biggest IT sourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Thursday, boosted by rising demand for its cloud computing services. The firm, based in India’s financial capital Mumbai, said net profit for the three months to June 30 rose to 63.17 billion rupees ($944 million) from 57.09 billion rupees for the same period a year ...

  Bloomberg Bets that India’s yet-to-be-named new central banker will lean toward looser monetary policy have accelerated a drop in interest-rate swaps triggered by improving cash supply in the financial system. The cost to lock in rates for a year fell to 6.43 percent in Mumbai on Wednesday, the lowest level since September 2010, and has dropped six basis points ...