Labour and Social Affairs Minister Jana Maláčová said Sunday the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were worse than those of World War II as she argued in favour of reopening schools. Prague Jewish Museum director Leo Pavlat raised objections to the statement of Ms. Maláčová comparing the coronavirus pandemic consequences to World War II. Maláčová said in a TV debate on Sunday that not even the Second World War had prevented children from going to school. Pavlat reminded that Jewish children were banned from attending all types of schools during WWII. “Covid is a disease that has made the country stop working for a year, the country is at a standstill, the entire economy is struggling. Even World War II did not do what the virus did. No other situation stopped us from sending the children to school,” said Maláčová in a television debate on CNN Prima News. Mr. Pavlát reminded that Jewish children were prevented from studying in all schools during the war. The statement also aroused criticism from journalists, labeled as “extremely insensitive” toward victims of the Holocaust. Maláčová later tried to backpedal, saying she did not mean to dishonor the more than 70 million victims of World...
The owner of C2H retail group Michal Mička said that the company entered insolvency proceedings due to coronavirus. The group owns the Kara and Pietro Filipi fashion stores The E15.cz server stated on Monday that the C2H group owes around 722 million crowns. The main creditor is Česká spořitelna. Negotiations on new investors were unsuccessful. Czech fashion brand Pietro Filipi will lay off all employees of its 23 stores. According to the latest financial statements, Pietro Filipi Stores employed 138 people at the end of 2018. At the end of 2018, another 64 people worked for the company Pietro Filipi sro, which procures clothing designs for the brand. The dropout of last year’s sales at Kara amounts to 200 million crowns while Pietro Filipi turnover fell to 227 million crowns from the previous 434 million in 2019. Employees of Pietro Filipi stores received a letter in January the day before payment stating that they were out of work and without money. “The employment relationship with you will be terminated,” according to the daily, the company’s human resources director Jan Zipser wrote to the employees. “Pietro Filipi Stores does not have funds left in the account, so unfortunately we will not...
Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI) has signed an agreement on the acquisition of 100 percent of the shares of Equa bank from AnaCap Financial Partners (AnaCap), a specialist financial services private equity investor. Equa bank focuses on consumer lending and serves 480,000 customers. The proposed acquisition is part of RBI’s strategy to expand its presence in selected focus markets. The business models of Equa bank and Raiffeisenbank are very complementary, which is why the transaction would ultimately lead to strategic synergies as well as enhanced digital capabilities. “The acquisition would increase the synergy effect, especially in the area of cost savings and revenue growth,” said Equa bank spokeswoman Petra Kopecká. As of year-end 2020, Equa bank had total assets of more than EUR 2.8 billion, while Raiffeisenbank a.s. reported total assets of EUR 15.7 billion. “Although Equa bank is significantly smaller than Raiffeisenbank in terms of asset volume, the bank’s high level of customer satisfaction and impressive loan growth make it an attractive acquisition for us,” states Raiffeisenbank website. Closing is expected around the end of the second quarter of this year. On the basis that deal completion is successful, there is a plan to merge Equa bank with Raiffeisenbank...
The Czech government faced the threat that parliament may tie its hands in efforts to combat the coronavirus outbreaks, after a key ally in parliament said on Friday it would not support the extension of emergency executive powers. The Communist Party, which supports Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s minority coalition government, said it had decided to withdraw backing for the powers in response to the government ignoring its calls to reopen schools and ski resorts. “The government did not take our conditions seriously and decided otherwise,” the party said in a statement. The state of emergency provides a legal framework for some of the government’s key measures against the coronavirus spread, such as limits on freedom of movement, and deploying the army to help hospitals overstretched by COVID-19 patients. The Communists said that some of the measures can be implemented by regional governments, while the troops helping in hospitals could go there on a voluntary basis. If the government fails to find the votes in parliament, the state of emergency will expire on February 14. Babis said earlier on Friday that expiration of the state of emergency would be a “catastrophe” which could put lives in danger. Some hospitals have been...
2020 brought with it several major trends. Despite the continuing rise in real estate prices, the Czechs’ desire to invest in real estate did not decrease – especially in smaller apartments and older houses with good public transport connections. Their number increased by 36% year-on-year, supported by greater availability of rental apartments and declining rental prices. In the largest Prague market, rents returned to the level of 2018 at the end of the year. Key reasons for this development lies in the greater availability of rental apartments and decreasing rental prices. Rent prices equivalent to prices in 2018. On another note, sale prices of old houses and flats increased despite the Covid-19 pandemic, with a year-on-year increase of 13%, the average price of a house went up to 37 635 CZK per square meter, while apartments increased to 67 517 CZK per square meter. Real estate prices increased the most, year-on-year, in the Hradec Králové Region (houses by 31%, flats by 24%), in the Ústí Region (houses by 33%, flats by 18%) and the Plzeň Region (houses by 26%, flats by 16%). Flats in the capital remain the most expensive, where the average price in 2020 was around 95,196 CZK...
The Czech currency strengthened below 26 korunas per euro on Wednesday morning for the first time since the declaration of a state of emergency due to coronavirus last March. According to Patria Finance analyst Tomáš Vlk, the exchange rate may be affected by the statement of the Governor of the Czech National Bank, Jiří Rusnok, on the possibility of raising interest rates. According to Vlk, the assumption that the koruna may become one of the few currencies for which interest rates will rise is gradually becoming known to investors. “Lately, Governor Rusnok drew attention to the possibility of raising rates,” he added. The base interest rate, on which the interest rate on commercial loans is based, remained at 0.25 percent even after the December meeting of the Bank Board of the Czech National Bank (ČNB). In an interview published on Wednesday by the E15 daily, Rusnok stated that the rate-setting does not need to be changed yet. However, he admitted the possibility of raising rates this year, albeit at a slower pace than the ČNB predicted in November’s forecast. According to Miroslav Novák, an analyst at the Akcenta CZ financial company, it does not matter when the ČNB will actually...
Czech Television (ČT) presenter Václav Moravec claims that the current Minister of Health, Jan Blatný, will quit and leave his position in 14 days. Moreover, ČT also claims that the current Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Andrej Babiš, will take over the Health Ministry department and that Blatný will be replaced by the former head of Ministry, Roman Prymula. Prymula was the Minister of Health for the duration of a month last year in 2020, however, he has since then resigned after being spotted leaving a restaurant during Covid-19 lockdown. Additionally, ČT claims that Prymula has been attending government meetings in the past weeks. Prime Minister Babiš has publicly denied the information given by ČT, stating that he has no intention of leaving or replacing the current Minister of Health. “It’s all just speculation and gossip on the Václav Moravec show. I suppose he was trying to raise the profile of his show, which is not much talked about anymore”, commented PM Babiš. President of the Chamber of Deputies, Vondráček, has also publicly stated that the show’s claims are all just gossip and rumors and that there has not been any information between government officials claiming that this would...
New mortgages in the Czech Republic grew by 34.3% year-on-year in 2020 to a record volume of 217 billion crowns, despite the global coronavirus pandemic’s impact on lending, data from the Czech National Bank showed on Friday. The central bank has been monitoring the mortgage and housing market in recent years as a potential source of inflationary pressures caused by soaring property prices. House prices were 17% overpriced on average, the bank said in November as it warned against risks to both banks and the broader economy. Low interest rates supported the demand for mortgages, as the central bank has kept its main two-week repo rate at 0.25% since last May after it had slashed it by 200 basis points during the first coronavirus wave in spring. The bank also eased some of the limits on mortgage lending in April, like the share of the loan to the property price (loan-to-value, LTV) or the maximum share of payments on the clients’ income (debt-servicing-to-income, DSTI). Overall, new and refinanced mortgages rose by 39.6% year-on-year to 266 billion crowns, the data showed, while household loans added just 0.8% to 264.5 billion crowns. xosotin chelseathông tin chuyển nhượngcâu lạc bộ bóng đá arsenalbóng...
EU regulators should loosen state aid rules further to make it easier for companies hit by the COVID-19 pandemic to receive support, the governments of Austria, Denmark, and the Czech Republic said on Thursday. The European Commission, the EU competition enforcer, relaxed its rules in March 2020 but the three-member states said limits still existed on the levels of government aid, particularly in the case of direct grants. “European businesses will face severe economic consequences well into 2021,” the trio said in an open letter published in the Financial Times. “Yet each passing month raises the amount of COVID aid that businesses have received, bringing them ever closer to the state aid limit ceilings. “To end this uncertainty, we suggest that the ceilings for direct grants and uncovered fixed costs be raised significantly,” they said. The letter was written by Denmark’s acting minister for industry, businesses, and financial affairs, Dan Joergensen, along with Karel Havlíček, deputy prime minister of the Czech Republic, and Austrian Finance Minister Gernot Bluemel. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager is currently seeking feedback from member countries to extend the looser rules to the end of 2021 and allow more funding to businesses crippled by the pandemic....
The latest figures show that the Prague hotel market has borne the brunt of the coronavirus crisis in Europe. Hotel industry in Prague recorded the steepest decline in average revenue per room in 2020, down 84.6% on the previous year, with only Barcelona, Rome, and Lisbon being impaired on a similar scale. Even so, confidence in the Prague hotel market and its long-term potential is hardly waning, as underscored by the unflagging interest not only among investors, who are always on the lookout for good opportunities to buy but also among hotel operators, who have identified Prague as the main target of their activities. “The Czech authorities did not follow the example set by many other countries in using local hotels to accommodate health professionals or as makeshift hospitals. All this hastened Prague’s status as one of the most devastated hotel markets in Europe. Having said that, we must remember that these are temporary factors not directly related to the tourism market, which should recover quickly once the virus has been brought under control,” said Bořivoj Vokřínek, Strategic Advisory, Head of Hospitality Research EMEA, Cushman & Wakefield. Results reported for last summer, when rules were eased for a while, signalled...
Statistics show that 15% of the employees who work in the Czech Republic are foreigners, and they constitute a substantial number across various sectors. In the past decade, from 2010 to 2019, the number of foreigners in the Czech labor market has tripled. Evidently, the Covid-19 crisis had interrupted this growth, but it has only been a temporary stunt. These figures have been drawn up from statistical records documented by the Czech Statistical Office (ČSÚ). Dalibor Holý, from the ČSÚ, has commented that the number of employees would not have increased without the presence of foreigners, and he correlates this statement to the fact that many Czech citizens are seniors and past their prime, while young adults and those who are fit to work constitute a much smaller number of the Czech populace. “From 2010 to 2019 the number of foreign employees increased by 407,000, while the number of Czech employees decreased by 63,000”, said Dalibor. Industries that have seen a rise in the number of foreign workers include the agriculture and forestry industry, with a rise from 4 to 17% since the past decade. Meanwhile, in administration, 54% of the workers in 2019 were foreigners. In construction, foreigners now...
When it comes to company closings, 2020 was a year for the record books. In 2020, 16,111 companies ceased to exist in the Czech Republic, 353 more than the year before and at the highest number in the country’s history. On the other hand, 27,228 businesses were established, the lowest number in the past six years. A total of 11,117 companies have been added in the Czech Republic, which is the least since 2003. The data were published on Tuesday, January 26 by Czech Credit Bureau (CRIF). The number of shut-down companies began to increase significantly during 2015 and the trend continued last year, although it was partly dampened by government interventions. Last year, the number of newly established companies also decreased, 2842 fewer than in 2019. “This significant year-on-year decline was registered mainly in March, April, and October,” said CRIF analyst Věra Kameníčková. The number of limited companies being set up in the country was on a steadily growing trajectory until 2017 when it peaked at 31,204. However, the growth registered a slight decline in 2018. During 2020, most companies were established in Prague (12,844), in the South Moravian Region (3,339) and in the Central Bohemian Region (2,169). Most...
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