News

A Croatian daily has reported that Czech film director Jiří Menzel, along with others, was involved in a minor scuffle with a local man during filming in the town of Dubrovnik. The filmmaker and his cameraman exchanged words with an angry restaurant owner who showed his displeasure at the crew blocking a sign to his venue. Afterwards the director described the incident as “silly”. The Czech filmmaker, who holds an Academy Award for his film Closely Watched Trains, has been in Croatia directing two documentaries about the country for Croatian TV.

A new poll released by the Median agency has suggested that the Social Democrats have moved ahead of their closest rivals, the Civic Democrats, in voter preference – roughly two months ahead of early elections. The poll put the party at 34.8 percent, almost three and half percent ahead of the Civic Democrats. The leftist party had suffered a loss in voters since the European elections, polls had indicated until now. According to the survey, if the election were held today, the Communists would finish third behind the Social and Civic Democrats, with almost 12 percent of the vote. The Christian Democrats would gain 7.8, and the newest party TOP 09 would receive 6.5 percent. The poll suggests no other party would gain enough votes to make it into parliament.

By contrast, a separate poll on Friday by SANEP put the Civic Democrats in front with 32.1 percent, the Social Democrats second with 30.8, the Communists third with 13.3, Top 09 fourth with 9.2, and the Christian Democrats last with 5.9 percent.

The Bank Board of the Czech National Bank voted unanimously on Thursday to decrease the base interest rate to its lowest point ever, with a quarter-point cut to 1.25%. Economists hope commercial banks will react in kind, decreasing interest on loans for businesses; market rates in recent times however have shown little response to the development of the central bank’s rates. The bank’s governor Zdeněk Tůma, indicated that even at this historic low rate there is still leeway, with rock bottom for interest rates always being zero. The central banks of other countries have also reviewed interest rates in recent days, with Hungary bringing its main rate down to 8.5% and Poland setting its own record low at 3.5.

In other economic news, the Czech Credit Bureau has released bankruptcy reports for July that show the worst month for businesses since January of 2008 when the current insolvency act was passed. 129 entrepreneurial entities declared bankruptcy over the last month, while recent growth in personal bankruptcies decreased slightly. One fifth of the bankrupt firms were in Prague. Compared to the same month in 2008, entrepreneurial bankruptcies have doubled while personal bankruptcies have increased threefold.