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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 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 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.

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.