Top Czech Business News - Prague Daily Monitor

The Anti-Monopoly Office received in July another anonymous complaint about the purchase of the Spanish CASA transport aircraft by the Czech military, the server euro.cz writes Wednesday.

The 3.5 billion-crown contract Prague has signed for the supply of four Spanish military transport planes CASA will probably be modified at the request of the producer, the EADS consortium, which is a chance for the Czechs to have the price lowered, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes Tuesday.

Construction of a giant underground gas storage facility, which is to be the biggest of its kind in Europe, was Tuesday launched at the uranium mine Rožná in southern Moravia.

The Czech market for commercial real estate will stabilise this year, and next year will already grow, according to company Colliers International which provides commercial real estate consultancy.

Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek proposes, in his first draft state budget for 2011, to save CZK 58.5 billion on state expenditures and to gain another CZK 20 billion in higher revenues so that the budget gap does not cross 4.6% of GDP, daily Hospodářské noviny reports.

Net earnings of Czech bank Komerční banka (KB) increased to CZK 6.1-6.4bn at end-June from CZK 5.8bn profit in June 2009, analysts polled by ČTK said Monday.

Czech state budget deficit decreased to CZK 69 billion at end-July from June's CZK 75.7bn and the gap is also lower in annual terms, the Finance Ministry said Monday. The state budget showed a deficit of CZK 76.2bn in the same period last year. The budget has been approved with CZK 162.9bn gap for this year. In July alone the state budget was CZK 6.7bn in the black, while in July 2009 it posted a deficit of CZK 7.9bn.

Supermarkets started losing their popularity in the recent years owing to the arrival of hypermarkets and their market share is falling, according to a research made by the company Incoma GfK.

Cuts in the state's spending alone will not release the Czech Republic from debt, even though the government does not like to hear such talk, Jan Macháček writes in the latest issue of weekly Respekt out Monday.

Loans at least 90 days overdue rose by 0.23 percentage point to 6.04% of all loans in the Czech Republic at end-June, the Czech National Bank said Friday.

Czech banks provided CZK 38.5bn worth of mortgage loans to households in H1 of the year, an annual drop of 3%, and Q2 mortgages stood at CZK 22.51bn, up 2.2% on the year, the Local Development Ministry said Friday.

Only transport projects in the Czech Republic whose suppliers will offer sufficiently large price cuts will continue, Transport Minister Vít Bárta said in a debate on Czech Television Sunday.

The Czech Letecké opravny Malešice (LOM) aircraft repairer has won NATO's tender for the upgrading of four Mi-17 Russian-made helicopters for Hungary and Bulgaria worth some CZK 250 million, the Czech Television has reported.

Defence Minister Alexandr Vondra has doubts about the planned construction of a hotel and accommodation facility in the Central Military Hospital in Prague costing CZK 2.6 billion, he told Czech Television Sunday.

The number of public auctions in the Czech Republic grew by roughly a fifth year-on-year to 1,453 in the first half of this year, according to statistics on public auctions on www.centralniadresa.cz.

Pivovar Svijany, the largest brewery in the Liberecký region, made a record profit of over CZK 167m last year, up 73% against 2008, and sales from beer and services rose by 28% to CZK 634m, according to the company's annual report.

Debts of Czech households at banks and financial institutions rose by CZK 6.55bn to CZK 1,011bn in June and year-on-year were CZK 77.9bn higher, the Czech National Bank said Friday.

Czech bank Česká spořitelna saw its consolidated net profit fall by 6.8% year-on-year to CZK 5.88bn in the first half of 2010, the company said Friday.

Car maker Škoda Auto raised operating profit by 40.6% year-on-year to around CZK 5.9 billion in the first half of 2010, the company said yesterday.

Energetický a průmyslový holding (EPH) netted CZK 522 million on CZK 7.22 billion sales in 2009, revenues from sales of electricity, gas and heat at nearly CZK 4 billion, Lidovky.cz reported yesterday.