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Czech billionaire developer Radovan Vítek’s CPI Property Group completed the sale this week of 550 million euros (CZK 14 billion crowns) in 4.9% bonds, a day before a CZK 70 billion lawsuit was filed against the him, the company and others in a US District court in New York over alleged fraud.

Year-on-year growth in consumer prices accelerated to 3.0 percent in March, the Czech Statistics Office reported on Wednesday. It is the highest year-on-year price growth since October 2012.

The Czech state could have lost out on hundreds of millions of crowns worth of tax money by not taxing heated tobacco, a report by Czech Radio has found out. Between 2017 to March 2019, products such as Philip Morris’ HEETS were excluded from the consumer tax.

February saw Czech industrial production experience a year-on-year growth of 1.5 percent, according to the latest Czech Statistics Office report released on Monday. The growth was mainly the result of energy production. The automobile manufacturing sector experienced a decline, but improved compared to previous months.

Vietnam’s start-up airline Bamboo Airways, which began operations in January, in expected to soon launch direct flights to the Czech Republic, which has a sizeable ethnic Vietnamese minority, the daily E15 reports.

Major Czech brewing companies are planning to open dozens of new branded pubs this year, Hospodářské noviny reported on Thursday. The move builds on a trend seen in recent years and is aimed at stemming a decline in consumption.

Prima TV, the second most popular commercial TV station in the country, has announced it is teaming up with CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) to launch a 24-hour news platform. The CNN Prima News channel should combine international news coverage by the CNN with national reporting covered by Prima.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has said that citizens and businesses should be able to profit from state online services within the next five years. Furthermore, citizens should be able to rely on online services to support them in the full administration process. The commitment was made on Monday, at the launch of the annual ISSS conference in Hradec Králové which is being attended by more than 2,000 guests from the public and private sectors.

On Monday, a new amendment went into effect which seeks to tackle the shady tactics employed by many exchange offices in the Czech Republic. They include the right of clients to cancel an exchange up to three hours after the transaction, as well as the prohibition of separating the exchange payment from the rate itself.

The price of vegetables in Czech shops has seen a steep growth. Potatoes – once the cheapest of commodities –are now more expensive than exotic fruits. And, since last year’s poor harvest was a pan-European problem, imports from other countries are not helping to bring down the exorbitant prices.