Companies don't expect Czech economy to revive much in 2013

Prague, March 11 (CTK) - Czech entrepreneurs do not expect a significant revival of the domestic economy this year and believe that in the first half of the year negative statistics on the development of wages, investments and employment will continue, reps of companies have estimated for CTK.

The figures should be improving in the second half of the year, they said.

"In the firsts half of the year, we expect continuation of the negative figures. There are not many signals of a turnaround to positive figures thus far," Confederation of Industry analyst Bohuslav Cizek told CTK.

The volume of orders is still very low. Wages have not much space for real growth and the reason is the increase in regulated prices, higher VAT and worse results of companies.

Moreover, unemployment grew at the beginning of this year. Caution therefore stays and some investments have to be postponed till the second half of the year, he added.

Pavla Breckova from the Association of Small and Medium-Sized Companies is not concerned about further development too much, though.

"No tree grows to the sky and no advanced economy can expect a permanent dynamic growth. I consider the expected stagnation of the Czech economy as a whole as realistic even when the growth or fall will differ in the individual sectors," she said.

There are no positive signals of revival in construction, which Breckova considers as a real problem with respect to the size of the sub-supplier market.

On the other hand, nothing indicates that, for example, exports to territories outside Europe would fall significantly, Breckova said.

The negative pace of the overall economic development should not be accelerating and a certain stabilisation should gradually come, said Cizek.

"Overall, with respect to the expected stabilisation to some degree, in particular in the second half of the year, and to the negative results from the close of last year, we still expect 'a positive stagnation', that is a sort of a positive zero (0.1 to 0.4 percent)," he estimated.

According to surveys among companies, private fixed investments should grow moderately but in the context of the growth seen in the pre-crisis times, this growth is basically negligible. Household consumption should get stabilised this year.

The Confederation of Industry expects a moderate fall in sales in the first months of this year but in the whole of the year sales could increase by some 1.5 percent.

However, the very good data on sales from foreign trade from last year have created a very high comparative base which will most likely not be exceeded in the first half of this year.

"The relatively weak rate of the crown and links to Germany will continue helping us but even the foreign markets do not expect too high growth," Cizek noted.