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Managers holding the Czech company purse strings are upbeat about the coming year but see the main task as expanding existing and foreign markets through conventional growth rather than through acquisitions. Risk aversion is still the order of the day and the feel bad factor is not forgotten.

Exports rose to record levels in 2013, largely thanks to a surge in the second half of the year. But some surprising countries feature in the list of biggest sales increases and Czech exporters appear to have had mixed success in expanding markets in countries targeted as top priority by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The Czech Republic has signalled it will take steps to sign up to tough rules on public deficits and overall state debt designed with the main aim of forcing euro zone government to get their public finances in order. For prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka the move is a low cost, symbolic, step which will mainly shackle the next government rather than this one.

Czech president Miloš Zeman has a lot to say about most macroeconomic issues but his call for French nuclear constructer Areva to be brought back into the Temelín tender does not totally add up.

The principle Czech spending watchdog has long suffered a severe deficit in its powers. The new government promises to remedy the situation surrounding the Supreme Audit Office but those sorts of pledges have regularly come and gone in the past without any fundamental changes.

One of the country’s frequently stated assets in attracting foreign investment has been its skilled and relatively cheap work force. However the outcome of a study by consultants Engage Hill suggests that the drawn out economic crisis has had a negative impact on Czechs’ work ethics and the country may be heading for trouble.

Significant investment decisions are on the horizon which could bring billions of crowns worth of inward investment and thousands of jobs, but they are unlikely to be the high skill, high salary posts the Czech Republic coveted not so long ago.

With unemployment having reached an all-time high in January the authorities are looking for ways to create new jobs in the worst-affected regions. One of the projects in the pipeline, discussed at a conference in the Senate this week, are state-supported personal and household services which have played an integral role in the recovery of the employment market in many other EU member states.

Year-on-year inflation in January fell to 0.2 percent from December’s figure of 1.4 percent, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Czech Statistics Office. Last month’s year-on-year rise in consumer prices was the lowest seen in the Czech Republic since way back in October 2009.

Scandal rather than success and savings appear to be the words most frequently linked to Czech attempts to employ information and communications technology advances in the public sector. An appeal by the significant Czech sector to give ICT a real chance by putting the right people and coordination in place looks like falling on deaf ears.