Page 5 - bne_newspaper_June_21_2019

The Regions This Week
June 21, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
Zuzana Caputova was sworn in as Slovakia's first female president. “I did not come to reign, but serve people,” Caputova, a former environmental activist known as the “Erin Brockovich of Slovakia”, said in her inauguration speech.
Latvia’s parliament approved legislation to strengthen control over the country’s financial regulator. The law was passed after a series of financial scandals, which put Riga under pressure to clean up its banking sector.
The opposition in the Czech lower house of parliament wants to initiate a no-confidence vote in the coalition government of Andrej
Babis’ ANO and the Social Democrats. The five opposition parties — the Civic Democrats, the Pirates, Mayors & Independents, the Christian Democrats and TOP 09 — stated that even though they don’t have needed majority to succeed,
they intend to call a no-confidence vote in the PM's government over his suspected conflicts of interest, as a moral gesture.
Polish CPI expanded 2.4% y/y in May, 0.2pp above the annual growth rate recorded the preceding month, the statistical office GUS said. The reading is also 0.1pp higher than GUS' flash estimate, published earlier this month.
A trade war over alcoholic beverage taxes is looming between Estonia and Latvia. Latvia agreed several years ago to raise excise taxes to bring them closer to the level in Estonia. However, the parliament in Tallinn has now voted to cut the excise tax in Estonia, which Riga says violates an agreement between the two states.
China's National Machinery Import & Export (CMC) laid the foundation stone for a 100 MW
solar power plant in Kaposvar, Hungary. The new power plant will be built on an area of 200 hectares, and will be able to meet the electricity demand of a city with 50,000 inhabitants. This makes it the largest solar power plant in Central Europe.
Temperatures in Lithuania hit record highs
for June, threatening this year’s harvest. A temperature of 35.7C was recorded at Kaisiadorys in central Lithuania, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country in June. Unusually high temperatures have also been recorded in fellow Baltic states Estonia and Latvia, which has been attributed to climate change.
The Polish budget posted a deficit of PLN2.2bn (€516mn) in January-May, the Ministry of Finance said. The figure marks a substantial increase in the budget deficit after the gap came in at just PLN80mn at the end of April. The widening of the deficit owes to the government’s paying out an extra pension to the retired as part of the ruling party’s plan of boosting expenditure in 2019, the year of a double election in Poland.
Czech private carrier RegioJet owned by Student Agency holding sold secured bonds worth CZK921bn (€35.96mn) with a maturity of five years, this being the first entry into the capital market and the first issue of bonds. The revenue will be invested in the company’s train fleet.
Shares in Hungarian lender MKB Bank started trading on the Budapest Stock Exchange
(BSE). MKB, Hungary’s fifth-largest lender
by assets, was acquired by the state in 2014
and privatised two years later after its toxic assets had been spun off under a restructuring plan approved by the European Commission.