Electricité de France and Italy's Enel together with Spanish Iberdrola delivered new bids for dominant Czech power producer CEZ and regional distributors on Monday. According to Czech daily MF Dnes, Enel/Iberdrola kept the same bid as in the first round, CZK 136bn, EdF is ready to pay CZK 213bn, however, EdF called for changes of sale conditions. Thus, EdF should be disqualified from the competition. The Czech government should decide about the sale of CEZ on Wednesday.
The Hungarian central bank cut its interest rates by 25 basis points at yesterday's meeting. The basic interest rate was set at 9.5%. The central bank could relax monetary conditions thanks to a decline in inflation and lower deficits of current account and state budget.
Argentinean economic crisis could affect some firms from Europe, nevertheless European economy as a whole should not be affected, said yesterday, Gerassimos Thomas, European Commission spokesman.
CzechInvest, the Czech FDI promotion agency, helped the Czech Republic to acquire FDI projects worth CZK 2bn in 2001, 30% more than in 2000.
The Czech Statistical Office is going to release December CPI figures tomorrow. We expect a decline of CPI by 0.1%, month-on-month, and an increase by 3.9, year-on-year, after 4.2% in November. At the same time, The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs will release December unemployment report. We forecast an increase of the rate of unemployment at 8.9% from 8.5% in November.
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