Aurelia Butler

The balance includes 23.5 billion crowns received from the Next Generation EU package aimed to support recovery from the coronavirus pandemic impact, the ministry said. In the standard income, most of the money came via structural funds and the Cohesion Fund aimed at development of poorer regions, the ministry said.In 2020, Czechs received 85.4 billion crowns worth of the EU subsidies, net of payments made into the EU budget.Since joining the EU in May 2004, the Czechs have a taken in net 961.5 billion crowns in funds.($1 = 21.5940 Czech crowns)(1 euro = 24.3062 Czech crowns) More

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian Airlines is due to resume flying the Boeing (NYSE:BA) 737 MAX plane on Tuesday, but opinions are divided on the airline’s first flight using the model since a crash nearly three years ago forced regulators to ground the fleet globally. In March 2019 a flight to Nairobi crashed in a field six minutes after take-off from Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa killing all 157 passengers and crew. The accident followed another incident five months earlier, when the same model crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people. The accidents exposed a problem with a system on the plane, and the model was grounded worldwide, costing Boeing some $20 billion and triggering court cases that exposed shortcomings with the certification process. The airline will fly a demonstration flight around Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, and return to Addis Ababa with journalists, diplomats and officials onboard, the airline said. Some relatives of those killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash were angered by the decision to resume flying the 737 MAX. “I will never fly in a MAX and certainly if I find myself booked into a MAX, I will have to cancel that flight,” said Tom Kabau, a Kenyan lawyer who lost his 29-year-old brother George in the crash. Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement on Jan. 22 that the decision came “after intense recertification” by multiple regulatory bodies. Ethiopia is among the last countries to return the 737 MAX to service; it is already flying in the United States, Europe, China, Australia, Japan and Indonesia. “We have taken enough time to monitor the design modification work and the more than 20 months of rigorous rectification process … our pilots, engineers, aircraft technicians, cabin crew are confident of the safety of the fleet,” the airline’s CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said in a December statement. More

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and seen by Reuters, Tom Cotton and Bill Hagerty said they were “disheartened” by media reports suggesting the agency was blocking efforts to tighten export controls on U.S. technology destined for SMIC, which they say enjoys close ties to the Chinese military.Tightening the controls “would close an important loophole and prevent the [Chinese Communist Party] and [the People’s liberation Army] from using U.S. technology to advance its military modernization programs,” the senators said in a letter dated Jan. 31, asking whether Raimondo supports added restrictions. The Commerce Department and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Trump administration placed SMIC on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s trade blacklist in late 2020 over concerns that SMIC aids China’s military.Normally, U.S. suppliers are required to apply for a special license – which faces a tough standard of review – before shipping any U.S. items to a company on the blacklist. However, when the Trump administration added SMIC to the list, it only applied that tough standard of review to highly specialized chipmaking equipment destined for the Chinese firm, granting a “case by case” review process for other U.S. items.In practice, that has meant license applications have gotten tied up in lengthy review processes https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-smic-exclusive/exclusive-amid-shortage-u-s-suppliers-to-chinese-chip-giant-smic-struggle-to-get-export-licenses-idUSKBN2AW18B as policymakers debate whether to approve them. It has also angered some China hawks, after documents showed suppliers to SMIC obtained billions’ worth in licenses https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-huawei-tech-idCNL1N2RH2AC.Reuters reported in December that the Biden administration has not decided https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-smic-idCNL1N2T203P whether to block more sales of U.S. chipmaking equipment to SMIC, but raised the possibility of discussing it further with allies. More

LONDON (Reuters) – Two thirds of people in Britain reported that their cost of living rose last month as inflation accelerates, even before a big rise in domestic electricity and gas tariffs in April, the country’s statistics office said.A third of those who reported their cost of living had gone up were cutting back on domestic fuel use, and just over half said they were spending less on non-essentials, the Office for National Statistics said.A surge in global energy prices has pushed Britain’s main inflation rate to a 30-year high of 5.4% – mirroring sharp rises in price growth in many other countries – and the Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates for a second time in two months on Thursday.Domestic fuel prices are expected to jump by a further 50% when a twice-yearly review of regulated tariffs takes effect in April, just as higher social security contributions are due to take a further chunk out of household budgets.Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is looking at ways to soften the increase in energy prices for people on lower incomes. The ONS said higher power costs were disproportionately hitting people on lower incomes. Its data showed the poorest 10% of households spent 7% of their disposable income on gas and electricity, compared with 2% for the richest 10% of households.Of those who said their cost of living had gone up, 87% said food they bought was more expensive followed by 79% who said their gas or electricity bills were higher.The ONS’s findings were based on a survey of nearly 4,500 people conducted between Jan 6. and Jan. 16. More

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Ongoing disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic poses a risk to India’s fiscal deficit target for 2022/23, a Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) analyst said on Tuesday, after the government presented its federal budget to support economic growth.India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman set a fiscal deficit target of 6.4% of GDP for the year ending March 2023. For the current year, she estimated a fiscal deficit of 6.9%, slightly above the 6.8% it had budgeted.The wider-than-expected fiscal deficit demonstrates the risk from the pandemic, said Christian de Guzman, senior vice president, sovereign risk group, Moody’s Investors Service, adding that the government had to spend more and miss some receipts from privatisation.India’s economy has rebounded from the depths of the pandemic but mobility restrictions to curb the spread of the virus have led to tens of thousands of job losses, hamstrung private investments and caused supply chain disruptions which have pushed up food and raw material costs.”The message here is that the pandemic risks still do exert an overall risk of a wider-than-expected fiscal deficit for the next year,” Guzman told Reuters.Sitharaman unveiled a bigger budget of 39.45 trillion rupee ($529.7 billion) for the coming fiscal year, stepping up investment on highways and railways and announcing higher subsidies for affordable housing, amid public criticism over inadequate relief following the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.The government, however, retained its aim to bring down the fiscal deficit to 4.5% of GDP by 2025/26.”There is still an overwhelming emphasis on capital expenditure to further growth momentum. There has been somewhat limited initiatives with regards to raising revenue,” Guzman said, adding that there was “some uncertainty” with the medium-term deficit target.A government report on Monday warned that growing risks of global inflation led by rising crude oil prices could hit the economy, while projecting growth of 8% to 8.5% next fiscal year compared with 9.2% in the current fiscal year and 6.6% contraction in the previous year.Guzman said the budget announcements did not change the rating agency’s stance on India. Moody’s rates India at “Baa3” with a “stable” outlook. More