Wednesday News Briefing

NEWS  

LOAN The parties of the governing tripartite coalition have decided to provide a 50 billion Kč loan to the International Monetary Fund as part of a European Union plan to resolve the eurozone debt crisis, the daily Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) reported Jan. 18, citing unnamed government sources. Finance Minister Miloslav Kalousek, whose pro-European TOP 09 party has been at odds with its Euroskeptic coalition partner, the Civic Democrats, over the loan, has denied the existence of any such agreement.  

KLAUS EU membership has had very little effect on the Czech Republic, President Václav Klaus said in a panel discussion at an economic forum in Saudi Arabia Jan. 18. The Euroskeptic Klaus, who has been invited to speak in Riyadh at a conference on economic transition in the Arab world, also said he does not expect the EU to be a major economic player in the coming years, according to MfD.  

LEAK Former intelligence operative Petr Bakeš has received a fine of 100,000 Kč for leaking to the media video footage of a meeting between Klaus' adviser Jiří Weigl and lobbyist Miroslav Šlouf ahead of the 2008 election, which saw Klaus secure a victory amid allegations of vote-rigging by lower house deputies. While confirming a fine imposed by a lower court in the case of Bakeš, the Prague City Court canceled a lower fine for Jiří Dvořák, the other operative who worked on the case, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reported.  

BUSINESS  

NEW COMPANIES A total of 22,333 new firms were set up in the Czech Republic in 2011, the lowest amount in five years and an annual decline of 5.5 percent, according to the agency ČEKIA's databases and calculations. Nearly half of the new companies were established in Prague, and 53 percent were involved in real estate, services, trade and construction. In the long run, limited-liability companies have been showing the most dynamic growth, according to ČEKIA's data.  

HARVEST The domestic fruit harvest fell 16 percent to 101,249 tons in 2011, ranking among the lowest in 50 years, and was 38 percent lower against the average of the past five years, Czech Fruit Growers Association Chairman Martin Ludvík told ČTK. Fruit sales will be more than 500 million Kč lower, Ludvík said. He attributed the fall to spring frosts, which caused damage to most of the country's fruit plants.  

CARS Hyundai will aim to sell more cars on the Czech market, Kenny Lee, head of Hyundai's Nošovice plant told daily Hospodářské noviny. The Korean auto manufacturer had 7 percent of the Czech market share last year and wants to boost it this year to double digits, even aspiring to replace Škoda as the market leader in some car segments. The company more than doubled its spending on production in the Czech Republic last year to 584.4 million Kč.  

WEATHER 

Prague, Czech Republic; mostly sunny; High: 3 C, Low: -1 C

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