• According to CTK News Agency, European Commission will extend Czech Republic’s exception for lowered 5% VAT rate for residential construction until 2010. Previous assumption was that as of next year the rate for construction of flats and houses would rise to 19% with the exception of social housing. • Number of Czech Republic citizens owning possession of more than USD 1m increased last year by 12.6% to almost 15k, according to Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. Weak dollar partly contributes to this fact. • Number of European Parliament MPs wants to push through change of inflation criteria for euro adoption. This criteria is not suitable for countries which are going through fast convergence to the old EU. • Polish central bank increased interest rates by 25bps. 2week repo rate increased to 4.50% while most of the market expected rates to remain flat. According to the bank anti-inflationary pressures are insufficient to hold inflation within the targeted range. On the other hand, wages growth could push prices further up. • Slovakia’s producers’ price index decreased in May by 0.1% m/m while prices increased by 1.3% y/y. • Unemployment rate in Hungary from March to May reached 7.3% and declined from 7.5% in February to April.