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The Regions This Week
March 22, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Central Europe
Czech President Andrej Kiska was questioned by the National Crime Agency (NAKA), as part of an investigation into his alleged blackmailing by the chair of the Smer-SD party, former prime minister Robert Fico. In late February, Kiska accused Fico of blackmailing him over constitutional court candidacy, intimidation and misusing the police and public institutions in his fight against him.
A panel of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judges rejected Budapest’s appeal against a ruling that the authorities had monopolised Hungary’s textbook distribution market, violating companies' property rights. The case was brought by textbook distributors Konyv-Tar, Suli-Konyv, and Tankonv-Ker, who argued that a single company, Konyvtarellato, had effectively monopolised the market.
Latvia has too many banks, said the head of the Finance and Capital Market Commission Peters Putnins in an interview with Latvian public televi- sion. “It is clear that the number of banks in Latvia is too big for the local market,” he said, adding that banks can survive only by finding their niche.
Plans to create a grand coalition failed in Estonia, as the Centre Party rejected an offer from the country’s other main party, the Reform Party that won the recent general election, to work together. Estonia’s outgoing Prime Minister, Centre Party chairman Jüri Ratas, said the party failed to agree on tax matters.
Gross wages in the Polish corporate sector grew 7.5% y/y in February, 0.1pp above the annual expansion recorded in the preceding month, the sta- tistics office GUS said. The reading extends the long trend of robust wage growth in Poland that owes to the tightening of the country’s labour market.
Czech car manufacturer Auto Skoda’s profit dropped 4.4% y/y in 2018 to CZK57.3bn (€2.234bn), mainly because of expenses associated with changes to emissions legislation,
the cost of new products, electromobility and other technologies and higher personnel costs, according to the company’s annual report.
Estonia's producer price index (PPI) grew 0.6% y/y in February, data released by Statistics Estonia showed. The headline figure sees
the PPI inflation rate gain 0.3pp compared
to January, extending the current trend of PPI inflation to 29 months straight.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened Hungary's foreign trade mission in Jerusalem. The new trade office is considered
a "branch" of Hungary’s embassy in Israel, which will remain in Tel Aviv.
Bids were invited to build a €100mn near surface repository for radioactive waste from Lithuania’s Ignalina nuclear power plant. Ignalina was closed down a decade ago and is currently being decommissioned.
Hourly labour costs in Latvia grew 13.1% y/y to €8.02 in unadjusted terms in the fourth quarter, the Baltic state’s Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) announced. The growth is 0.7pp below the annual growth rate seen in the preceding quarter but remains robust and is a reflection of the tightening labour market in Latvia.
Tens of millions of crowns are to be injected into the Czech start-up company Machavert, primarily by domestic players investing into start- ups. About four years of drug research has so far cost more than CZK100mn (€3.9mn), online 15.cz reported.
Lithuania’s current account showed a surplus of €54.89mn in January, the Bank of Lithuania reported. The current account surplus decreased 74.3% m/m but was an improvement against a deficit of €47.09mn recorded in January 2018.