Marketplace | All stories

The Czech Republic is looking to expand cooperation with China following a recent reset of relations with that country. Two months after a ground-breaking trip to Beijing by the Czech foreign minister, the minister of industry and trade, Jan Mládek, has just visited China in an effort to boost trade, investment and tourism links between the two nations.

E-books have been slow to take off in the Czech Republic with taxes, a local penchant for piracy, and caution from some of the traditional print publishers some of the factors in its slow roll-out. But the optimists are still sticking to the script that e-books can elbow themselves a much greater share of the market.

Breaking down traditional stereotypes of what jobs should be done by males and females is not a mainstream issue or priority in the Czech Republic. So while there seems to have been some progress in getting women in traditional male sectors, and vice versa, the advances have not been dramatic. In this week’s marketplace, we look at the very different ways Norway and the Czech Republic have tackled the problem.

The Czech health care sector is a frequent target of criticism from those inside looking out, those passing through, and those on the outside looking in. Scandals are fairly frequent, money for the service and praise from health care consumers often seem in short supply. We atempt to gauge the health of the sector and work out whether it is giving good value for money.

The Czech Republic has benefitted in the recent years from being the biggest “pull” for foreign investors in Central Europe. But the city of Brno’s rejection of 2.7 billion-crown investment from Amazon has sent is a major setback for the country’s efforts to attract more investors into the country which will also soon be hampered by planned new EU rules likely to cut the maximum incentives that can be offered to foreign investors. In this week’s edition of Marketplace, the head of the government agency CzechInvest Ondřej Votruba discusses the Amazon

After four years of decline, prices of Czech apartments rose slightly last year. According to figures recently released by the Czech Statistics Office, apartment prices rose on average by 0.5 percent nationwide in the second quarter of last year. In Prague, however, the increase was considerably higher. The statisticians believe this is a sign that the whole market is recovering – but the real estate sector remains highly sceptical, expecting prices to stagnate at best for years to come.

Blanka Milfaitová’s famous marmalade mini-manufacture is a dream come true. Her jams, produced in a small village in the Šumava mountains have won her the title of the World’s Best Artisan Marmalade Maker, the 2013 gold medal at the World Marmalade Awards and the Double Gold Star at the Great Taste Awards. Right now Blanka is on a European Marmalade Expedition making marmalade from local produce in 35 countries around Europe.

A recent expansion of the Dutch company Ahold in the Czech Republic reflects the country’s changing retail market. Ahold, which bought 50 stores from the loss-making Austrian firm Spar, is now set to become market leader, a new situation for the fragmented Czech market. But analysts say more changes are in the pipeline, including customers’ move away from supermarkets to smaller speciality stores.

Four central European countries have made a renewed effort to secure imports of natural gas from the United States. Amidst the ongoing Crimea crisis, the Visegrad Group states have appealed to US lawmakers to ease natural gas exports to the region as a way of diminishing its dependence on Russian gas.

A Czech company is following on the coat tails of the Facebook and social media boom by developing and selling the monitoring tools and analyses that can tell companies which brands or campaigns are hitting or missing the mark or where they are running into trouble.