The gap between the Czech Republic’s highest and lowest earners is growing, according to statistics by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and published in the monthly Lobby. The Czech Republic — as measured by the Gini coefficient, a number in which zero represents total economic equality — scored 26 in 2006, up from 25 two years ago. The OECD average is 31.

Czechs spend a total of 100 million hours per year playing games at work and another 120 million hours reading newspapers on the Internet, the weekly Ekonom reported in its latest issue. The figures come from a consulting firm that developed a program for monitoring employees’ computer use. The program has monitored 60,000 computers in 100 companies.

The Czech Republic should be able to adopt the euro by 2012, according to an approved national plan released by the Finance Ministry Feb. 21. The Czech Republic originally planned to adopt the currency by 2010, but was forced to delay the move due to a high public finance debt.

Czech coal company OKD and the Polish group Jastrzebska spolnota weglowa may collaborate on reopening the former coal mine Morcinek on the Czech-Polish border, the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported Feb. 27. The mine was closed in 2000, and still has some 250 million metric tons (275.6 million short tons) of high-quality coke left in it. Similar plans were proposed in 2002 and 2004.

ČSOB saw its 2006 net profit drop 8 percent year on year to 9.5 billion Kč ($440 million), amid accusations of accounting irregularities levied by the Czech National Bank (ČNB), the daily Mladá fronta Dnes reported Feb. 26. The ČNB called on ČSOB to include in its income potential losses from the acquisition of IPB Bank, which could reach 5.6 billion Kč, and revise its income statement downward by several billion crowns.

Cypriot company Goldenfrazil, a minority shareholder of Czech oil and chemical company Unipetrol, is demanding nearly 352 million Kč in damages from the Unipetrol board of directors, the daily Hospodářské noviny reported Feb. 27, citing a letter the company sent to the board. Goldenfrazil claims the board damaged Unipetrol by selling its Spolana subsidiary to a Polish company for 640 million Kč.

The number of visitors to Czech Web sites increased 1.4 percent in January to 5.3 million, according to statistics from NetMonitor. The number of Internet users has remained stagnant at some 4 million. The most popular site was Seznam.cz, followed by the news server Novinky.cz, which saw 15 percent more users than the month before.