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The Regions This Week
January 19, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
Hungary ranks lowest among European coun- tries, but is still in the camp of “free countries”, US-based NGO Freedom House said in its an- nual report. On a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is "most free" and 7 "least free," political rights in Hungary received a grade of 3 and civil liberties
2. Hungaryʼs aggregate score of 72/100 places the country in the free category but four points down from last year's score.
Viktor Orban's government secretly gave per- mission for the admission of the same num- ber of asylum seekers to Hungary in 2017 as
it would have had to admit under the EU quota scheme. In an interview published in the Times of Malta last week, deputy state secretary of the Foreign Ministry Kristof Altusz said the reason why the scheme to allow 1,300 refugees to Hun- gary was not made public was that it could have put them in danger.
The Hungarian government will launch an on- line invoicing system in July, the economy min- istry said. In addition to contributing to the whit- ening of the economy, the online system will also significantly reduce administrative burdens on businesses, the government says.
The consortium of US-based GE Hungary and Alstom Power Systems has been selected to supply turbines for the new blocks at the Paks nuclear plant for HUF793bn (€2.6bn), Russian state-owned energy company Rosatom an- nounced.
The European Commission has opened an investigation into the 2016 scheme of tax incen- tives for the Polish shipyard industry that might be in breach of the European Union’s state aid rules. The central issue is whether the special tax rate of just 1% applying to sales from con- struction and conversion of ships, which Poland granted to shipyards operating in Poland, has given the shipbuilding companies unfair edge over competition.
Poland’s economy will expand between 3.5% and 4.4% in 2018, the National Bank of Poland said
in the latest round of its macroeconomic forecast- ing.The forecast sees Poland’s economic growth to remain at an elevated level, even if the growth pace will most likely slow to 4% this year, as com- pared to the expected 4.4% expansion in 2017.
Poland’s current account showed a surplus of PLN982mn (€233mn) in November, swinging from deficit in the same month of 2016, the Na- tional Bank of Poland (NBP) reported. Compared to October, the surplus fell 22.9%.
Poland’s Financial Supervision Committee has denied granting approval to the Austrian banking group Raiffeisen Bank Internatonal for starting a new bank in Poland, the KNF announced. The KNF said RBI could not set up a new entity because it is yet to meet the regulator’s earlier requirement of listing its existing Polish unit, Raiffeisen Polbank. RBI reportedly planned to start a new bank in order to make the listing easier. The Austrian bank hoped that the new bank would take over Raiffeisen Pol- bank’s portfolio of foreign currency-denominated mortgages and then merge it with the parent bank.
Warsaw-listed state-controlled refiner PKN Orlen is going to reverse an impairment of PLN800mn (€192mn) linked to the company’s Lithuanian unit Orlen Lietuva, PKN Orlen said. PKN Orlen’s Lithuanian venture has a long history of financial trouble and arguments with the Lithu- anian state that also weighed on performance. PKN Orlen wrote down PLN4.2bn off its Lithuani- an subsidiary’s value in 2014. Orlen Lietuva turned out profitable in 2015 and 2016, however.
Kremlin-friendly Czech President Milos Ze- man topped the voting in the first round of the Czech Republic’s January 12-13 presidential election, but the narrowness of his victory leaves him exposed to a possible winning surge from Westward-oriented challenger Jiri Drahos in the second-round run-off on January 26-27.