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The Regions This Week
March 15, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Central Europe
A plan to build a railway tunnel under the
Baltic Sea to connect Finland and Estonia secured €15bn in funding from Chinese inves- tor Touchstone Capital Partners. If completed the tunnel will be the longest subsea tunnel, exceed- ing the Channel Tunnel that opened in 1994.
Slovak firms are not expected to go out of busi- ness in case of a hard Brexit, despite an expected drop in exports, particularly in the automobile industry, insurance company Coface country manager Juraj Janci told Tablet.tv. According to the updated 4Q18 Mid-term Prediction published by the Slovak central bank, a hard Brexit may cause a cumulative decrease of Slovakia’s econo- my growth by 0.7-1.1% by 2023, mainly through foreign trade that might decelerate.
The European Central Bank will take over supervision of Latvia’s AS PNB Banka following a request from the Latvian Financial and Capital Market Commission. Three major Latvian banks are now under ECB supervision in accordance with the European Banking Union’s Single Supervisory Mechanism.
Only 2% of women in Czechia earn more than men on average, according to analysis from the Czech Ministry of Labour. Women earn on average about one-fifth less than men.
Estonia’s ruling Centre Party proposed building a coalition with the far-right EKRE. The Centre Party is on the brink of losing power after coming in second in the March 3 elections, and extended the overture to EKRE despite previously pledg- ing to keep EKRE behind a cordon sanitaire in the election campaign.
NNG, one of Hungary’s leading software devel- opers, is laying off 10% of its staff, or 100 people, from its Budapest headquarters. The company develops onboard navigation systems for the car industry. CEO Giles Shrimpton informed staff at
the Budapest base that the company needs to rethink its operating structure.
Slovakia’s President Andrej Kiska appointed Minister of Finance Peter Kazimir to the post of governor of National Bank of Slovakia, who will assume the post as of June 1. Kazimir said he plans to continue the work of current governor Jozef Makuch.
Latvia’s finance ministry called for market input into the form the planned Baltic covered bonds framework will take. The Baltic states are looking into launching joint covered bonds with underlying assets from one or more of the three states.
Poland sold just over PLN5bn (€1.2bn) of zloty- denominated treasury bonds maturing between 2021 and 2028. Following the sale, Poland’s bor- rowing needs for 2018 are 61% covered. The de- mand came in at over PLN9bn. “The high demand confirms unflagging interest in Polish bonds,” the state bank BGK said in a note about the auction.
The Lithuanian capital Vilnius is Europe’s most affordable destination for a city break, according to the UK Post Office’s annual City Costs Barom- eter. Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, was rated Europe's most expensive city by the same survey.
Gas transmission capacity between Hungary and Romania could rise to an annual 1.75bn cubic metres (cm) from October as the interconnector will be enabled for two-way flow. Construction
of the gas corridor is a priority in the ten-year development strategy of MOL’s gas transmission unit FGSZ.
Czech inflation accelerated to 2.7% year-on- year in February, up by 0.2 percentage points compared to January, influenced mainly by increase in y/y price level of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, according to the Czech Statistics Office data.