Page 6 - bne_newspaper_September_08_2017

The Regions This Week
September 8, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Central Europe
Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka on September 4 agreed with Slovak counterpart Robert Fico to call a summit in Bratislava to debate the differing qualities of food products in Eastern and West- ern Europe. “We do not want to eat and drink crap,” Fico bluntly commented, announcing the key meeting.
European Central Bank head Mario Draghi dis- missed Estonia’s idea of issuing its own digital currency. Draghi said that a Eurozone member state cannot offer any currency other than the euro.
Polish demand for mortgage loans grew 7.4% y/y in August, 0.9pp above the 6.5% annual ex- pansion rate in July. The growth was driven by the good Polish economic situation and the booming labour market on which a shortage of employees is driving wages up.
Danish toymaker Lego is axing 70 jobs at its Hungarian production base in the northeastern town of Nyiregyhaza. This represents 5% of the workforce at the plant that currently employs 2,100 staff.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) provided nearly €1bn for Polish energy and science. The development bank said it extended €730mn in financing for research, development and innova- tion at Polish research institutes, universities and enterprises, while in a separate deal, it extended €250mn to Polish power firm Energa for the mod- ernisation of the company’s power distribution network.
Automated messages sent by robotic accounts or "bots" make up most of the Russian-language messages on the presence of Nato in the Baltic States and Poland appearing on Twitter, a report by the defence alliance found. English messaging discourse is also affected, with bots – traceable
to Moscow — producing around a quarter of all messages.
Czechia’s industrial production gained 3.3% y/y in July - a rate that was slower than anticipated – and slumped 9.8% m/m. Observers noted that the saying “When Germany sneezes, the Czechs catch a cold” came to mind; German industrial produc- tion flatlined in July as a slight increase in manu- facturing and construction output was offset by a steep fall-off in the energy sector.
Car sales in Poland achieved the strongest growth ever recorded in August by the country since the start of the 21st century. The number of new passenger cars and light commercial vehi- cles (LCVs) registered in Poland grew 16.35% y/y in August, market monitoring firm Samar said.
The Lithuanian energy ministry drafted a plan to curb the transmission and import of power from a Belarusian nuclear power plant currently being built in Astravets, 50km from Vilnius. The Lithu- anian parliament passed a bill in June declaring that the power plant is unsafe and a threat to national security.
Slovakia is worried it could be caught up in a looming Christmas butter shortage crisis. A 125-gramme pack of butter in Slovakia cost €1.01 on average in June, up one-fifth from June 2016's €0.84, Slovak Statistics Office data shows. In the Czech Republic, butter shortages are already ap- parent.
Hungary is mulling the revival of proposals that target foreign retail chains, which were previ- ously ditched in April. The move coincides with Tesco’s Hungarian workers preparing to go on strike for the first time.
Poland’s Monetary Policy Council kept interest rates unchanged. The MPC reiterated its long- held position that the current state of the econ- omy does not warrant any change in monetary policy.