Page 5 - Demo

The Regions This Week
June 30, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Central Europe
The Czech central bank said “an increase in domestic market interest rates in Q3 2017”
is consistent with its current forecast. Czech benchmark interest rates have been kept at 0.05% since November 2012.
The former head of the Czech Academy of Scienc- es, Jiri Drahos, would beat incumbent President Milos Zeman in a run-off election, if it were held now, a Median opinion poll showed. Running as an independent, Drahos would take 53.5% of votes in a second round run-off, while Zeman would win 46.5%. The direct election takes place in January.
The Czech lower house passed amendments
to gun ownership legislation that have been slammed as an attempt to revive the era of the Wild West. The bill would allow gun owners to use legally-held weapons in the event of a terrorist attack. The bill will now head to the Senate. The Czech Republic will by the end of August file a complaint at the European Union Court of Justice against a Brussels clampdown on weapons.
Czech police are investigating suspicious pay- ments totalling around €7mn that were sent
to Albania in 2009 by state-controlled energy group CEZ. The cash was paid in two installments to Nue Kala, a Kosovan lobbyist close to then prime minister Sali Berisha. The payments were made around the same time that the Czech power giant spent €102mn on buying control of a major Albanian distribution company.
Volkswagen Slovakia will hand over a 14.1%
pay rise to workers at its plant in Bratislava to end a strike. Tensions have grown in labour rela- tions over the last year or more as Central Europe faces a worsening labour shortage. The issue is particularly sharp in the vital auto sector, with industrial disputes also ongoing in Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Slovakia’s industrial producer price index ex- tended a slowdown from the surge witnessed at
the start of the year in May, statistics office data showed. Factory gate prices rose 1.9% y/y, sug- gesting another significant deceleration compared with the 2.4% gain the previous month and 3.0% in March.
Raiffeisen Bank International plans to float a 15% stake in its Polish business Raiffeisen Bank Pol- ska on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) around July 19, the bank said. The IPO’s price range has been set at PLN25.5-PLN28 (€6-€6.6) per share. Book-building for institutional investors will last until July 6; the IPO does not target retail investors.
The Lithuanian business of Polish state-con- trolled oil and gas company PKN Orlen signed an agreement with state-owned Lithuanian Railways on transit fees. PKN Orlen and Lithu- anian Railways have been at odds over the price of access to the Lithuanian rail network for haul- ing refined products out of PKN Orlen’s Mazeikai refinery to the oil terminal in the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda.
Polish unemployment fell 1.7pp y/y to a record low 7.4% in April. In monthly terms, the jobless- ness rate decreased 0.3pp.
The Hungarian government suffered another setback in its populist campaign to whip up op- position to the EU. An “overwhelming” majority backed the Hungarian government’s stance in the national consultation survey on the EU, but the turnout was just 21%. The national consultation asked loaded questions aimed at “protecting Hun- gary’s borders and preventing immigration”.
The Hungarian parliament passed amended legislation that will tighten regulations on politi- cal billboard posters outside election campaign periods. The bill is designed to stop rightwing Jobbik’s cut-price billboard campaign against government corruption. Under the new regula- tions, organisations that receive budgetary sup- port must pay listed market prices for adverts.