Rent on rent-regulated apartments to rise up to eight percent a year

Rent on rent-regulated apartments will rise by a maximum of eight percent a year for the next five or six years, according to the local development minister, Jiri Paroubek. The increases will affect one fifth of flats in the Czech Republic; like free-market rents they will vary in different parts of the country. Mr Paroubek said deregulating rents in one go was impossible because it would threaten social cohesion.