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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.

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 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.

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.