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Little headway has been made on road building in the Czech Republic in recent years and the situation is unlikely to improve soon, according to the Supreme Audit Office. However, ANO are promising to speed up the process.

The heads of government of the Visegrad Group are holding a summit in Budapest on Friday. The prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland are debating the establishment of a regional development bank, European issues and bilateral cooperation.

The Czech Republic and the Australian-based metals company, European Metals Holdings (EMH) will sign an addendum to the memorandum on lithium mining in the Czech Republic, the outgoing Minister of Industry and Trade Tomáš Hüner said following talks on Thursday with EMH representatives and the Czech firm Geomet, which holds a prospecting license for natural resources at the Cínovec mining site in the north of the country.

Karlovy Vary based Czech mineral and bottled waters giant Karlovarské Minerální Vody (KMV) has taken a significant step in boosting its portfolio of products and its turnover.

A hat made in honour of Jiří Raška, the 1968 Olympics ski jumping champion, that is the highlight of the 2018 Winter Olympic collection, is reported to be hugely successful. With just over two weeks to go to the start of the Winter Olympics in South Korea the hat is sold out and Alpine Pro, the company that produced the Czech Olympics outfit, is scrambling to put several thousand more pieces on the market ahead of the games.

The Czech spending watchdog, the Supreme Audit Office, has submitted a caustic report on the accounting abilities of one of the country’s key ministries, the Ministry of Regional Development. It says cash flows worth billions of crowns was not properly registered in the books.

Buying used cars in the Czech Republic has long been considered a risky proposition and sadly checks by the Czech Trade Inspection Authority (CITA), a government bureau under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, has found the situation has not much improved.

Prague has decided not to sign up to a legal appeal against air pollution limits approved by the European Union in 2017. The Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade had argued that the country should join Poland in opposing the curbs, but the cabinet decided otherwise on Wednesday.

Chinese bike-sharing company Ofo will start operating in Prague this year. Around one thousand bikes should be available for rent in the wider city centre as of spring 2018. The company also plans to expand its activities in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Czech Republic’s spending watchdog has roundly criticized the way state and European funds were used in connection with different projects to maintain and improve the country’s forests. It found that in many cases there was no real attempt to make sure that tens of millions of crowns were spent getting the best value for money.