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Furniture makers in the Czech Republic have reasons to be cheerful. According to figures just released by the Czech Statistics Office and quoted by the business daily E15, the industry saw a 13-percent increase in revenues last year – the healthiest growth it has experienced for a decade and a half.

The Czech Cabinet has moved to clamp down on retailers’ abuse of their power against suppliers with the competition office being offered a more meaningful and workable set of laws. But the real test of whether the right toolbox can be found will have to wait another year or two.

The government’s special representative for Moravia-Silesia says there is a real threat that steelmaker Vítkovice Steel could close and operations could shift to Russia. The company has rebuffed the comments but there’s little doubt that the steelmaker has still to recover from the sector's downturn.

Home Credit BV, a consumer-loan and banking unit of Czech billionaire Petr Kellner’s PPF Group, last year saw a marked decline in its fortunes stemming from an economic downturn in its biggest market, Russia.

The opening of Prague’s controversial Blanka Tunnel complex was recently postponed indefinitely by Prague City Hall after it emerged that hundreds of kilometres of electric cables had been damaged by water and needed replacing. Originally, the tunnel, the longest such complex in Central Europe, was slated to open at the end of 2011. Had it opened on time, financial news website iHNed reported this week, it would have already translated into billions of savings.

The Czech unemployment rate fell in February from 7.7 percent a month earlier to 7.5, with those out of work numbering a little under 550,000, roughly 8,000 fewer than in January. A year ago, unemployment in the country stood at 8.6 percent.

The Czech Republic has been given a modest rating for its progress paving the way and putting the country on the digital superhighway. Countries, like Singapore and Hong Kong, which made a determined effort to become regional digital centres, lead the pack but the likes of Estonia and Slovenia show that the Czech Republic could have a realistic chance of doing a lot better.

The Czech construction sector, one of the biggest victims of the economic downturn, is now showing solid prospects of growth for this year with the across the board revival expected to continue into 2016. Growth will, however, bring some of its own problems.

ČEZ’s annual profits continued their recent slide for 2014 with a further drop expected for this year as well. The upturn is hard to see amid continued weak power prices.

The minister of finance, Andrej Babiš, plans to reduce the value added tax charged in Czech restaurants to 15 percent as part of an amendment introducing the compulsory recording of takings in electronic form. He is set to present the bill to the cabinet next month.