Business | All stories

Last year Czech consumers spent a whopping 5.4 billion crowns on toys – a four percent rise year-on-year. According to the Czech News Agency, domestic manufacturers saw a nine percent rise in production, while multi-national national firms produced toys worth 5.6 billion.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the introduction of mortgage loans to the Czech market. Interest rates were very high in the beginning and Czechs were slow to adapt the new financial product. In fact, only 150 mortgages were secured in 1995, Hospodářské noviny wrote on Thursday.

The hot summer in the Czech Republic is set to impact on household budgets as relatively poor crop yields are leading to higher prices for vegetables, particularly potatoes, iHned.cz reported.

The world’s two biggest beer producers – AB InBev and SABMiller – have reached a preliminary agreement on a merger worth an estimated 93 billion euros. SABMiller gave the nod to the deal after four previous attempts by the other company; SABMiller is the owner of dozens of breweries worldwide including one of the most famous in the Czech Republic, Pilsner Urquell.

The first official delegation of Czech entrepreneurs to visit Cuba for decades left for the communist country on Monday. More than 20 Czech companies are taking part in the historic mission, while another is planned for the very near future, the Czech News Agency reported.

The state-owned Czech Postal Service faces court action over alleged discrimination in salaries. Employees in Moravia say they will sue the company after finding out that they make on average 3,000 crowns a month less than their Prague counterparts.

The US has just hammered out one trade agreement stretching across the Pacific. But the much discussed wide ranging agreeement across the trans-Atlantic with the EU is still being negotiated with the target of sealing it under Barack Obama’s second term looking doubtful.

Industrial output in the Czech Republic gathered pace in August, achieving year-on-year growth of 6.3 percent, according to figures released on Wednesday by the Czech Statistics Office.

The Czech car maker Škoda Auto, which belongs to Vokswagen AG, has launched a website allowing owners to check if their cars are affected by the current emissions scandal. Skoda said earlier that 1.2 million of its vehicles were equipped with the TDI engine that manipulated emissions data.

Ten months after a new law on allergy labelling went into force, a third of Czech restaurants and delis are still failing to fully comply with it. The Food Inspection Office says that 37 percent of restaurants and eating places recently inspected either failed to provide the respective information on their menus or only gave it on request.