Archive of articles - November 1996, page 2

OECD reps to visit and discuss report

Less than two months after the global economic club the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), issued its first comprehensive report on Slovakia's economic development, many of the Paris-based institution's heavyweights will be coming to town to discuss the document."It is quite usual that we [OECD] arrange such a seminar shortly after the release of such a significant report," Oliviera Martins, the principal editor of the OECD survey on Slovakia, told The Slovak Spectator. "The conference's purpose will be to stimulate internal debate and discussions about the economic situation and progress in structural reforms in Slovakia on the basis of the analysis provided in the survey."At stake is Slovakia's entry into this exclusive club of developed nations. An informed source in Slovakia familiar with OECD activities says the organization decided that the four central European countries should be admitted in alphabetical order in about six-month intervals.

Slovak-Hungarian incidents overshadow premiers' rhetoric

Two controversial incidents involving Slovaks and ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia have deflated statements by Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar and Hungarian Premier Gyula Horn from their meeting in Piešťany on November 5 that no tensions exist between the two countries.In the Slovak capital of Bratislava, the Ministry of Culture backed a controversial poster drive spreading the message that while the number of ethnic Slovaks in Hungary was declining, the ethnic Hungarian population in Slovakia was rising. The posters' tone inflamed ethnic Hungarians in the country and their political leaders. One of those polticians, Laszslo Nagy, a deputy in Parliament from the Hungarian Civic Party, publicly called on Bratislava Mayor Peter Kresánek and Culture Minister Ivan Hudec to remove the posters.

Whirlpool buys out Slovak partner

Business Center success emboldens agency

Emboldened by successfully filling its Bratislava Business Center (BBC) office complex with high profile tenants months before opening, the real estate agency HB Reavis is preparing a multi-functional project that will be eight times as large as the BBC. The 15,000-square-meter, 500 million Sk ($16.5 million) BBC, on the corner of Prievozská and Plynárenská streets, will open in January with 29 tenants. That list includes nine tenants committed to at least 350 square meters of office space, plus services such as notary, express mail, copy center, and florist. SlovTel, the mobile phone consortium led by France Telecom, the Swiss telecommunications company Landis & Gyr, and the international accounting and consulting firm Deloitte & Touche are the three largest tenants. Each of them will have at least 1,100 square meters, and together they will account for 51 percent of the rented space.

City woos Irish Pub to liven up Old Town

In their effort to enliven the historic Old Town, officials at Bratislava City Hall have successfully recruited a profitable bar man to open an Irish pub in one of the few buildings the City still owns.When Bronislav Michalčák, Mayor Peter Kresánek's right-hand man, first met Irishman Robbie Norton 10 months ago, he described how the capital city's streets - virtually dead after dark - could use a hopping night-life magnet such as the Norton family's Prague pubs. Within weeks, Norton agreed. Within months, the two had closed a 10-year lease deal, with an option to extend, on 350 square meters in the former premises of a state shoe store on Sedlarská ulica, across from the French and Hungarian embassies.

Letter to the Editor: "Tiso deserved his death by hanging"

Top office space still available

All 2,000 square meters of rentable retail space is full, but half of the 3,000 square meters of office space remains unsigned in Slovenská Poisťovňa's new headquarters building, scheduled to open on Bratislava's Dostojevského Rad in April.Slovenská Poisťovňa, the country's largest insurance company, owns 100 percent and will occupy most of the 30,000-square-meter building. Miroslav Kubík of the letting agency IURIS would only say the building's cost makes it "one of the most expensive buildings in Bratislava." Rent for both office and retail space is about 7,600 Sk ($250) per square meter per year.

Spotlight

Letter to the Editor: Tiso is "certainly not sacred" to many

Securities bill to depress market

A new amendment to the Securities Act passed by Parliament at its November session will severely depress interest in and the liquidity of the capital market in Slovakia, market organizers and brokers said. This latest change in securities legislation - already the seventh in the past four years -means that shares will no longer have to be dematerialized, that is the price at which they were bought or sold need not be disclosed. It also means that shareholders are no longer obligated to trade their shares on the capital market.Reactions from leading Slovak officials involved in the capital market was swift and negative. Deputy Finance Minister Jozef Magula, widely known as the architect of the ministry's sometimes controversial capital market directives, resigned on November 7, the day after the measure passed.

Slovak gas giant looks to profit in Greece

The Slovak gas company Slovenský Plynárenský Priemysel (SPP) is looking far over the border into Greece to buy its way into a regional gas distribution company that SPP officials are confident would generate profits supplementing the slim returns it makes on gas sales within Slovakia. SPP has leaped into an international tender to sell gas transported via a newly-built gas pipeline stretching from Russia through Bulgaria to Athens. According to SPP spokesman Ľuobomír Rabaj, SPP is competing in the tender to buy 49 percent of the Greek distribution firm EDA that would channel gas to northern Greece. While the Greek government is expected to announce the tender results by the end of the year, Rabaj ranked the chances that SPP - Slovakia's sole gas distributor - would win the tender as "very high."

HZDS deputy walks out on his own party

Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar's political party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), has lost a deputy. František Gaulieder, 45, one of HZDS's founding members, announced on November 5 he was giving up his membership in the political club because he could no longer identify with the party's policies."There are too many discrepancies between promises and acts, between the government's program and its fulfillment,'' Gaulieder told Parliament. "There have been too many activities that have nothing to do with building a democratic society.''

Community Grapevine

Slovnaft weathers oil price hikes

Bratislava Cafés

Nortel, Alcatel to supply SlovTel

Darmo to be dismissed as STV director

In a secret vote on October 29, the governing board of state-run Slovak Television (STV) approved a proposal to dismiss Jozef Darmo as the station's general director.The private station Radio Twist reported that over several months STV's council had "comprehensively evaluated" Darmo's activities since he took his post at STV, and will now formally submit to Parliament their proposal that he be dismissed. There was no date given when that may happen.Darmo was appointed STV's general director shortly after the government formed by Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar took office in December 1994. The deputy chairman of STV's council, Jerguš Ferko, was quoted as saying the council's decision showed "dissatisfaction with certain things in Slovak Television not developing to the benefit of the public."

Holiday Inn here; canthe capital accomodate another?

Even with the opening in September of the international hotel chain Holiday Inn in Bratislava, local innkeepers seem undaunted that the capital city's small market is in danger of becoming saturated. "We welcome all competition," said Koloman Kollar, general manager of Bratislava's Hotel Forum, of Holiday's Inn arrival. "We like them to be here."Lena Bakova, Holiday Inn's marketing manager, said her hotel has started sucessfully thanks to its international reputation with business people. "We are a business hotel," Baková added. "Our main competitors are the Hotel Forum and Hotel Danube, but they're both 20 percent more expensive than Holiday Inn."

Mečiar scolds EU parliamentarians

European Union representatives to the joint Slovak-EU parliamentary committee carried little optimism away with them as they boarded the bus that whisked them out of Bratislava from their third bilateral rendezvous. "If the situation here does not change, I'm afraid Slovakia will not be allowed into the first group" of new EU member countries, Doehe Eisma, a European Parliamentarian from the Netherlands, said on October 30, after three days of EU-Slovak committee meetings and negotiations. "It is all up to the Slovak government."While Slovakia has economically overtaken its post-communist neighbors, statements such as Eisma's make it clear that in many Western countries' view, Slovakia has fallen behind in its democratic development.