Page 5 - bne_newspaper_November_24_2017

The Regions This Week
November 24, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
The European Union’s top court ordered Poland to halt logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest or face a fine of €100,000 a day. Poland's logging in the forest, which is Europe’s last remnant
of primeval woodland, has raised domestic and international outrage this year and served to isolate Poland in the European Union further. Parts of the forest are designated as a Unesco World Heritage site.
President of the European Council and former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk attacked the Polish government with running a policy line that resembled the Kremlin’s. “Alarm! Bitter dispute with Ukraine, isolation within the European Union, departure from the rule of law and independent courts, attack on the NGO sector and free media — the strategy of PiS or a Kremlin plan?” Tusk tweeted.
The Polish state-controlled oil and gas company PGNiG has signed a five-year deal with UK- based Centrica LNG, covering supplies of LNG from the US. Poland has been working to increase diversification of its gas supplies to reduce the dependency on imports from Russia, which Warsaw considers a hostile country.
Polish industrial production grew an unadjusted 12.1% y/y in October in constant prices, data from statistical office GUS showed. In seasonally adjusted terms, industrial production grew 9.7% y/y.
Polish retail sales grew 7.1% y/y in constant prices in October, statistics office GUS announced. The reading marks a slowdown in the pace of growth at the onset of the fourth quarter after turnover expanded 7.5% y/y in September.
The Czech Ministry of Finance has hiked its growth outlook this year and next, following the economy’s 5% year-on-year growth in the third quarter. In its latest Fiscal Outlook the finance ministry predicts that the economy will grow by 4.1% this year before slowing down to 3.3% in
2018 and averaging around 2.5% a year in 2019- 20. The forecast is an upward revision from its prediction of 3.1% in 2017 and 2.9% for 2018 issued in July.
Skoda Auto, the Volkwagen subsidiary that is by far the Czech Republic’s largest company by revenue, will produce all-electric cars at its main Mlada Boleslav plant by 2020, the company announced on November 17. In 2019 it will also produce a plug-in hybrid version of its top model, the Superb, at its Kvasiny plant, and electrical components for models of other plug-in hybrid VW brands.
Hungary has expressed interest in buying the lighting business of General Electric, business weekly HVG reported. The fate of some 5,000 people is at stake. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto also took part in talks with GE officials on the sale of the lighting unit. The US multinational is planning to exit the lighting business after 139 years and has begun talks on the sale of these units globally.
Hungarian gross wages grew 13.6% y/y in September and net wages at the same pace to HUF194,800 (€622) and to HUF202,700, including family tax benefits, the Central Statistics Office KSH reported.
Slovakia’s cabinet has approved the purchase
of 81 armoured vehicles from Finland’s Patria for an estimated €417mn, in a deal the coun- try’s opposition parties claim lacks transparency. State-owned defence company Konstrukta De- fence, Patria, and Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace will design and build the 8x8 armoured vehicles, in a deal the government says will resus- citate the country’s once proud defence industry.
The Slovak unemployment rate was 6.14% in October, down by a massive 2.94 percentage points year-on-year and 0.28% month-on-month, according to data released by the Slovak social affairs ministry.