Page 3 - bne_newspaper_July_05_2019

The Regions This Week
July 5, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 3
Central Europe
Lithuania declared an emergency situation as
a severe drought threatened to halve this year’s harvest. Declaring an emergency will make it possible for Vilnius to compensate farmers,
after the Baltic state registered its hottest June on record.
After years of dispute, the Czech government says it will approve a plan for the new units of the Dukovany and Temelin nuclear power plants. The state-owned energy company CEZ Group will invest through subsidiaries, Hospodarske Noviny reported.
The temporary supervisory board of the Latvian state-run utility company Latvenergo resigned, just two weeks after appointment by the country’s economy minister. The dismissal of the board exposes tensions in the Latvian government, a five-party affair that took months to complete and was predicted from the start to find it difficult to govern smoothly.
Hungarian property developer Wingholding announced the launch of a €100mn corporate bond programme for 2019-2020. The company will issue a number of series of bonds, denominated in either euros or forints, with runs of between three and ten years, paying fixed or floating rates.
Lithuanian ride-sharing service CityBee expanded into Estonia and Latvia. The company installed 100 electric scooters in the Estonian capital Tallinn in June, followed by 150 in Riga at the beginning of July. The cost to rent the scooters is considerably less than it would cost to travel by taxi for similar journeys.
Poland’s Monetary Policy Council (MPC) left interest rates unchanged at their current record low of 1.5%. There are no grounds to consider tightening of monetary policy until at least the end
of 2021, the MPC chairman and the governor of the National Bank of Poland Adam Glapinski told reporters.
The Czech IHS Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index plunged to its lowest level since July 2009, posting 45.9 in June, down from 46.6 in May and well below the 50 no-change mark, partly driven by a faster decline in production and the steepest decline in new orders since May 2009, according to an IHS Markit report.
Moody's Investors Service changed the outlook on Hungary's banking system to stable from positive. Banks have largely completed de-risking their balance sheets and further improvements in loan quality will be more limited in the next 12 to 18 months, Moody's said.
Latvia's anti-corruption bureau named Harmony party leader Nils Usakovs as a suspect in an ongoing corruption probe. Usakovs, the mayor of Riga until he was sacked this spring, was elected to the European parliament in May.
Estonian industrial production grew 1.2% y/y in May, working-day adjusted data from Statistics Estonia showed. The expansion follows a fall
of 0.4% y/y recorded in Estonian industry the preceding month.
Polish wages grew 7.1% y/y in the first quarter of 2019, resulting in an average gross monthly pay packet of PLN4,950.9 (€1167.1), according to data released by statistical office GUS. Wage growth
is powered by the tightening labour market.
Slovakia’s housing loans provided by banks amounted to €28.6bn at the end of May, up by €2.7bn y/y and by €252.1mn m/m, according to the latest figures published by the Slovak central bank (NBS).