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Czech food export levels reached nearly CZK 18 billion last year, more than double the amount sold abroad in 2010. The steady growth is largely thanks to the international nature of supermarket chains such as Lidl and Penny, which sell the products in their stores across Europe.

In October, Czech industry experienced the second best result in 2018 in terms of year-on-year growth, as the Czech Statistical Office reported growth of 6.7 percent. Largest contributions came from the car industry, metal manufacturing and the electronics sector.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš launched a bilateral Czech-Moroccan Business Forum in the city of Casablanca on Wednesday. In his speech, Mr. Babiš said that Morocco could become the Czech Republic’s largest trading partner on the African continent and that the two countries are currently discussing cooperation in the automobile, aircraft and armaments industries.

Tuesday saw representatives of the National Wine Centre and a special evaluation committee announce the best Czech wine of 2019. The winner is the Rulandské bílé, a special Czech form of Pinot Blanc from Castle winery Bzenec, specifically the late harvest collection 1508 from 2017. The winning vintage was selected out of a pool of 400 finalists.

The Czech Statistical Office reports that the average monthly salary in the Czech Republic is now at CZK 31 516, an 8.5 percent year-on-year increase. Indeed, growth in salaries will experience a 15-year high in 2018 overall. However, experts say that wage growth in the private sector should decrease next year.

Andrej Babiš and his ministers are promising to introduce a so-called “national investment plan”, which will summarize countrywide infrastructure improvement needs as well as the schedule when they will be carried out. While detailed numbers are yet to be released, the prime minister has said that the 17 000 projects envisaged in the plan are to cost CZK 3.45 trillion.

Czechs donated eight billion crowns to charity in 2018, according to a report released by the Czech Donors Forum this week. It also suggests that an increasing number of people prefer to donate money on-line.

The number of foreigners working in the Czech Republic has more than tripled since the country’s accession to the European Union in 2004. At the moment, there are more than half a million foreigners working in the country, according to Czech Statistics Office data and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

A Czech-US start up called DOT Glasses could help millions of people all over the world, who are in need of glasses but can’t afford them, the daily Hospodářské noviny reported on Tuesday. The start-up, which plans to produce affordable 3D-printed glasses, has just completed a crowd-funding campaign on Czech site Hithit, collecting 450,000 crowns for further development.

The Czech economy has been outperforming its central European neighbours and is set to reach something of a psychological milestone next year, when GDP per capita is on track to reach 85 percent of the Eurozone average. In more tangible terms, though, the average Czech is enjoying greater purchasing power, and confident they can always find work.