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The upper house of the Czech parliament, the Senate, rejected on Friday a financing plan for the purchase of 24 new fighter jets for the Czech Air Force, which is the biggest military deal in Czech history, amounting to nearly 2 billion USD.

The Regional Court in Usti nad Labem, North Bohemia, has ruled that the local authorities breached the law during proceedings concerning the construction of a new industrial zone near the town of Most, where the Mexican company Nemak has started building its plant.

The Czech foreign trade in April ended with a deficit of 40 million USD as compared to the 300 million deficit in the same period of 2001. The result is significantly better than expected. Economic analysts had predicted a deficit of around 200 million dollars in April, approximately the same as in March.

The Czech Senate on Friday rejected a law that would almost entirely ban tobacco advertising within two years. The senators opposing the law said they thought the measure was too broad.

The Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman has said the Czech government has been unofficially offered 260 billion CZK, which is around 9 billion USD, for its majority stake in the power utility CEZ.

On June 2, 2002, the ATM networks of 15 Czech banks will be out of operation. Clients will be unable to use their bank cards for payments in shops either. The company MUZO which runs the transaction authorisation system for bank cards will be upgrading its software.

Czech hop-growers expect a decrease in revenues due to the appreciation of the Czech currency. The chairman of the Association of Hop-Growers of the Czech Republic, Zdenek Rosa said hop-growers had signed contracts with traders for some 6000 tonnes of hops at an average price of 140,000 CZK per tonne.

One of the largest Czech banks, Ceska sporitelna savings bank, is about to take its stocks off the Prague Stock Exchange or PSE, joining the numbers of other high-quality stocks that have left the market. The only large Czech bank to continue trading on the prestigious main market of the Prague Stock Exchange is Komercni banka. The question remains for how long.

The Czech national railway operator, Czech Railways, posted a loss of 4 billion CZK in 2001, 800 million less than in the previous year. The figure is 1.3 billion lower than loss envisaged by the company's board of directors.