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Economic growth in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States will slow this year, with Poland and Russia acting as a drag on the region, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said in its bi-annual Transition Report.

According to Czech regional daily Deniky Bohemia, farmers in mountainous regions of the Czech Republic fear they might go bankrupt after the Czech Republic joins the EU.

The number of Czech households with an digital ISDN phone line has been growing by hundreds of per cent every year - from 195 at the end of 1997 to more than 80,000 at the end of 2001 and to over 83,000 in April this year.

Czech retail sales on March grew by five percent year-on-year, as compared to 4.2 percent in February while the overall price level remained virtually the same. The Czech Statistical Office said the acceleration was mainly due to surging demand for groceries and petrol, but also clothing and household and gardening products.

Czech and Polish Transport Ministers have signed an intergovernmental agreement on the connection of the Czech D47 motorway with Polish A1. Poland is to build the 50-km part of the A1 motorway to the Czech border by 2008.

An extraordinary general meeting of the Czech power utility CEZ on Monday rejected an energy sector restructuring plan put forth by the Czech cabinet. The plan included an acquisition by the state-owned energy utility CEZ of the government's majority stakes in six of the eight regional electricity distribution companies and minority stakes in the other two. In exchange, the Czech National Property Fund was supposed to acquire a majority in the company CEPS which controls the power transmission system and is currently controlled by CEZ.

Meanwhile, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman said it was highly unlikely that the Czech government would manage to privatise Czech Telecom before the upcoming June general elections.

The Czech Producer Price Index decreased in April by 0.5 percent month-on-month after stagnating in March. In year-on-year terms, producer prices were 0.1 percent lower than in April 2001.