Business | All stories

On Thursday it will be six months since legislation took effect banning billboards from the side of major roads in the Czech Republic. However, to date only around a tenth of the hoardings in question have actually been removed.

The Czech flight search company Kiwi.com last year doubled its turnover to 17.7 billion crowns (some 700 million euros), the Czech News Agency reported on Friday. Company founder Oliver Dlouhý expects to double turnover again this year.

Karlovy Vary based Czech mineral and bottled waters giant Karlovarské Minerální Vody(KMV) recorded a turnover of 8.3 billion crowns (3.3 billion euros) in 2017, which is an increase by 12 percent on the previous year, the Czech News Agency reported on Thursday. The company achieved reached record results for the third consecutive year.

The change in the composition of pensions, drafted by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's government in resignation, will raise existing low pensions, but slow down increases in roughly one-half of all pensions, Labour and Social Affairs Minister Jaroslava Němcová has said.

Large breweries will mainly invest this year into export and canned beer, the daily Hospodářské noviny reported on Tuesday. Consumption of canned beer saw a sharp increase last year and the Czech Beer and Malt Association says this trend to continue.

Czech companies notched up record export success in 2017. But building on that performance this year is likely to be a major challenge with companies probably needing to break into new markets.

Czech textile and clothing companies last year recorded their best results in the past 12 years, the daily Hospodářské noviny wrote on Thursday.

An enormous number of Czechs – almost 10 percent of those over the age of 15 – are in trouble with debt-collecting bailiffs. Indeed, more than 150,000 people in this country are facing a minimum of 10 distraint orders, according to the latest edition of a map of such cases released on Tuesday.

Public Private Partnerships have had a short and not very glorious history in the Czech Republic as a means of financing major infrastructure projects. But so-called PPPs now appear back in fashion with the Ministry of Transport plotting the use of private capital to pave the way for one major highway.

Czech hotels, guesthouses and camp sites registered a record 20.1 million tourists last year, according to the Czech Statistics Office. The number of foreign visitors was 10.2 million, which is almost equivalent to the entire population of the Czech Republic.