Czech households are growing poor and the state spent more than seven billion crowns on housing allowances paid to over 200,000 households in 2012, which is considerably more than a year before, the daily Pravo writes Tuesday.

The economy is plugging along, Prague employment rates are good, banks are well capitalized and consumers are not (comparatively) under a lot of debt, Prague property experts agreed at a meeting end of April.

Romanian state-owned energy company Electrica has filed an arbitration complaint against Czech energy concern ČEZ last year in October, claiming CZK 486 million, the weekly Týden writes citing ČEZ spokeswoman Barbora Pulpánová.

AVE CZ, one of the largest domestic waste management companies, is up for sale and the investors interested in it are investment group Penta, group PPF of richest Czech Petr Kellner and EP Idustries controlled by Daniel Kretinsky, weekly Euro writes in its latest issue.

Czech exporters of machine tools and forming machines registered record CZK 14.07bn sales on foreign markets last year, 10.5% higher than in 2011, and imports of these machines dropped by 1.4% to CZK 8.3bn, according to data of the Association of Engineering Technology (SST).

Some Czech policy makers see an increased likelihood that the central bank will need to sell the koruna to ease monetary conditions, minutes from the bank's May 2 policy meeting showed Friday.

In a speech at the Russian embassy in Prague, President Miloš Zeman said that he would like to see the volume of Russian investments in the Czech Republic increase in the next few years.