Page 5 - bne_newspaper_April_26_2019

The Regions This Week
April 26, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
Czech police recommended billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis should be indicted for alleged fraud involving EU subsidies worth €2mn, according to the spokesman for the Prague state prosecutor's office Ales Cimbala, iRozhlas. cz reported. Babis described the case as "politicised" and “an organised plot”.
President Kersti Kaljulaid officially appointed the leader of the centre-left Centre Party Juri Ratas as Estonia’s prime minister. Despite losing the March general election, Ratas will preside over a coalition government he managed to piece together with the highly controversial far-right EKRE party and the conservative Fatherland group.
Hungary's Magnus Aircraft will complete construction of a 5,000 sqm composite parts plant by the end of summer to boost production of its flagship composite sports aircraft, the company announced. The company's production base is in southern Hungary near the Pecs- Pogany airport.
The European Commission approved €385mn support for the production of electricity from renewable sources in Lithuania. According to a Commission statement, the scheme will “will contribute to the EU environmental objectives without unduly distorting competition.”
Czech household confidence dropped for the third consecutive month, falling to its lowest level since 2016. Confidence in the Czech economy increased very slightly by 0.1 point month-on- month in April to 97.1 from 97.0 in March, with households being more worried about their future financial situation for the third consecutive month and entrepreneurs with slightly better confidence in industry, according to a report from the Czech Statistics Office.
Hungarian-owned Eurotrade laid the cornerstone of a 5MW solar park in northwestern Hungary. The family business plans to install nearly 20,000
solar panels on an eight-hectare area by the end of September. The company is in the midst of developing 30MW of solar power capacity.
The two main candidates for the Lithuanian presidency are neck and neck less than three weeks before the election. The latest poll saw
MP Ingrida Simonyte overtake economist Gitanas Nauseda, who previously led the race, but Simonyte’s lead is less than two percentage points.
Slovakia’s M.R. Stefanik Airport in Bratislava posted a 32,999 growth in the number of transported passengers in 1Q19, up by 9% year- on-year to processed 385,650 passengers, the second largest first-quarter growth in passengers in the history of the airport, according to the airport’s press release.
The Polish unemployment rate dropped 0.7pp y/y to 5.9% in March, Poland’s statistical office GUS said. The unemployment level was only lower in the early 1990s, after which market reforms pushed it to well above the 10% mark and further to the peak of 20.7% recorded in March 2003.
Growth of Latvia's producer price index (PPI) eased to 4.1% y/y in January, data from the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) showed. The annual expansion came in 0.6pp below the annual reading in February, pushing the duration of
the PPI growth series to 26 months.
Lithuanian industrial production grew 5.1% y/y in March on a calendar-adjusted basis, according to data from Statistics Lithuania. The continuous growth of industrial production is promising for the national economy at the beginning of the year.
Prices of real estate in Slovakia increased by 5.2% y/y on average in 2018, down from 6.3% in 2017, with a square metre of real estate being sold at an average price of €1,431, according to data from the National Bank of Slovakia.