News

The Czech National Bank raised the base interest rate on Thursday by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.75 percent, the highest value since April 2002. The move was caused by inflation which reached 6.5 percent in January; the Bank expects it will keep on rising. Economists say however that the January rise in inflation was a single event and that the inflation should drop to three to four percent during the year. The current rise in inflation has been caused by the increase in the prices of food, oil and other energies as well as rents. Despite the rise, the Czech interest rate is currently the lowest in the European Union.

In related news, the Czech National Bank lowered its estimate of Czech economy growth in 2008 to 4.1 percent. The Bank’s estimate is more pessimistic than that by the Czech Finance Ministry which had previously estimated that the Czech economy will only grow by 4.7 percent.

Ivan Dejmal, former Czech environment minister and deputy head of the newly-established Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, died late on Wednesday, at the age of 61. Dejmal was environment minister from 1991-1992 pushing through a crucial law on nature and landscape protection. In the 1970s Dejmal was persecuted by the communist secret police. He was twice imprisoned for allegedly “undermining the Czechoslovak communist state” and for his frequent contacts with the dissident community. He spent four years in prison.

A monument to the US President Woodrow Wilson will be re-erected in Prague, a City Hall official said on Thursday after a meeting with a representative of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Five sites have been chosen where the memorial might be positioned. The original monument was built in 1928 in front of Prague’s main train station which also bore Mr Wilson’s name, but was destroyed by the Nazis after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Woodrow Wilson, who was the US president during the First World War, defended Central European nations’ right to self-determination which was instrumental in the foundation of Czechoslovakia in 1918.

Two Czechs who were trapped under an avalanche in the High Tatras mountains in Slovakia on Thursday have been rescued. The accident happened when a group of Czech tourists was hiking in a poorly accessible part of the mountains; after the avalanche hit them, one of the men was able to get to the surface and called the mountain rescue service.