The Czech koruna reached as high as to 27,86 in early trading on Wednesday. Then, the currency was hurt by the release of Czech current account balance, when the deficit came out at -26,2 bn. CZK. Our estimate was -4 bn. CZK. Widening of external imbalance is a risk for the CZK in longer term, but actual good sentiment on CE currencies prevented it from further losses. The pair CZK/EUR closed at 27,89.
The koruna has weakened against the dollar and closed at 21,09 CZK/USD. The move is partly due to firming of the dollar on international markets. The USD has surged after better than expected US retail sales and trades at 1,3225 USD/EUR.