Page 6 - bne_newspaper_April_27_2018

The Regions This Week
April 27, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Central Europe
EU funding to the CEE region could be reduced
as Brussels has proposed tying funds to criteria such as respect for the rule of law. That could result in Poland and Hungary, whose govern- ments have been pushing "illiberal democracy", receiving less EU funding over doubts about how their populist governments are upholding values enshrined in EU law.
Slovakia is battling Romania to become the loca- tion for Zhi Dou's new plant. The Chinese electric carmaker has narrowed down its has narrowed down its choice on where to build a European fac- tory to the two East European countries.
PPF completed its acquisition of Czech
Skoda Transportation, a manufacturer of electric trains, trams and buses. The European Commission approved the acquisition by the investment vehicle of Petr Kellner, Central Europe’s richest man, earlier this month.
Hungarian oligarch Lorinc Meszaros quit his mayoral job to focus on his business empire. Meszaros, a close friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said he hoped the move would reduce media scrutiny of his activities.
Nordea bank expects the Baltic economies to decelerate in 2019. Overall, the bank’s outlook is positive for 2018 but warns that trade tensions between the US and the rest of the world pose a risk to the growth outlook.
Leading Czech liqueur maker Stock Plzen- Bozkov sold 25mn of litres of alcohol on the domestic market in 2017, up 8% y/y. With rising wages and falling unemployment, Czechs are
buying more luxury alcoholic beverages than ever before, the producer said.
Credit rating agency S&P suspended the B/B rating of Polish debt recovery firm GetBack, which listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange last year. Last week, Fitch downgraded the embattled company's ratings by two notches, adding to worries about its outstanding $520mn debt.
Lithuanian airports handled 1.2mn passengers in the first quarter, with the bulk of passengers again arriving from or departing to the UK, said Statistics Lithuania. The figure represents
a growth of 16.1% y/y.
Czech economic sentiment is at its highest level since May 2008. The economic sentiment indicator (ESI) increased 0.4 points m/m in April to 100.1.
Polish flag carrier LOT bought three new Dreamliners as it focusses on long-haul flights to the US and Asia. LOT will expand its fleet of Dreamliners to 15, one of the largest numbers among air carriers in Europe, by next year.
The Slovak National Bank will maintain its countercyclical capital buffer rate for banks at 1.25%, effective from May 2019. This is in line with an earlier decision to become the first eurozone central bank to introduce the macroprudential instrument.
The Polish unemployment rate came in at 6.6% in March, a drop of 1.4pp y/y, the country’s statis- tical office GUS said. The unemployment level has not been this low since early 1991. The tightening of the labour market began in early 2014.
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