The Czech National Bank and Ministry of Finance came into an agreement that most of privatization revenues and revenues from Russian debt should be frozen and not converted into the Czech currency to avoid a negative impact on the exchange rate. The same reason led Ministry of Finance to postpone an issue of eurobonds.
The interministerial privatisation commission is going to meet today and discuss sale of a stake in power utility CEZ and six regional distributors and recommend the winner to the government that will likely discuss the issue at a meeting on Wednesday.
Employment in U.S. economy continued to decline in December, and the unemployment rate edged up to 5.8%. Non-farm payroll employment decreased by 124,000 over the month and by 1.1 million over the last 4 months of 2001.
Eurostat released a preliminary December CPI figures for euro-zone. The price level increased by 2.0%, y-o-y, after 2.1% in November. The CPI inflation reached the lowest level since May 2000 (1.9%) and approached ECB target rate again.
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