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Following the unique lifting of limits on brown coal mining by the government in Bílina, North Bohemia, the Bílina Mine has formally set the ball rolling to be allowed to mine more than 150 million tons of coal still in the ground. Once approved, heavy machinery will move within half a kilometre of nearby villages. Before miners can remove a single lump of coal, however, further steps will have to be taken.

The Czech agency for boosting exports and two-way trade, CzechTrade, has opened an office in the biggest economy in Africa, Nigeria. Nigeria is estimated to have overtaken South Africa to first place as Africa’s biggest economic power in 2014.

Revolutions promise change, the only problem being that the promised changes don’t always go to plan and rapid transformation often throws up its own batch of winners and losers. It’s not surprising then that the so-called fourth industrial revolution – which basically amounts to the introduction of more automation and digital technology to the manufacturing process has sown its own batch of fears and concerns.

Czech dairy farmers have little reason to be cheerful. Latest European Union figures show they are being paid the lowest prices for their raw product across the 28 EU member countries. The average Czech price to producers in December came to euros 26.40/100 kg compared with the EU average of euro 32.03/100 kg. Czech farmers argue though that their production costs are not much below those applying across the rest of the continent.

General satisfaction with the outcome of the 2016 budget, which ended with a surplus of 61.8 billion crowns, was short lived. Coalition parties are now embroiled in a heated argument on how the money should be used, with no compromise solution in sight.

The world’s biggest showcase for consumer technology firms, tech heads, and those wanting to get a glimpse of the latest innovations, has just closed its doors. Some Czech companies have been coming to the Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show (CES) for a while now but this time round it has also been a showcase for the first time for some Czech start-ups.

A successful French start-up called Dayuse, which sells hotel rooms with cut-price rates by the hour, is set to be launched in the Czech Republic in January, the daily Hospodářské noviny wrote on Friday.

Just as the nation contributed to the reconstruction of the National Theatre in Prague after it was ravaged by fire in 1881, Czechs are being given the opportunity to contribute to a significant part of St. Vitus Cathedral – a symbol of Czech statehood, the church where Czech kings were crowned and where they were buried. The cathedral, which is home to the crown jewels, and where the Archbishop of Prague serves masses on important occasions, still lacks a pipe organ that would crown its glory.

2016 was a very good year when it came to the state budget, which ended with a surplus of 61.8 billion crowns. The result is the best since the foundation of the Czech Republic in 1993. The last time revenues exceeded expenditures was in 1995 and the result is a feather in the cap for Finance Minister Andrej Babiš. But critics charge that the achievement could not be attributed to the minister alone, far from it.

Seven new or reconstructed shopping malls are set to open in the Czech Republic this year, which is twice as many as in the past two years, according to a report by real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield.