Archive of articles - August 1997, page 2

Message to the state: Quit meddling with the economy

The Slovak economy needs a less hands-on approach by the government. It needs to let the market free itself up. The current government, faced with a shortage of capital and a burgeoning trade deficit, enacted measures (7 percent import surcharge, wage regulation, increased energy prices, company revitalization) in its economic package before seriously contemplating the consequences. The Slovak economy is full of dead wood companies which are eager to grab korunas from the highly political corporate revitalization plan in order to save their fledgling, uncompetitive firms. Less state meddling, not more, is what the economy needs. Meddling has created chaos in the economy.The government is keen to listen to key allies in the economy - namely pharmaceutical and beer companies - who want to protect the domestic market from imports.

The Spotlight

FACE OFF*SHINE*ANACONDABREAKDOWNEMMALADY AND THE TRAMPDONNIE BRASCOMURDER AT 1600BULLETS OVER BROADWAYTHE EIGHTH DAYTWIN TOWNSHE'S THE ONEHAMLETSWAN PRINCESSFRENCH KISSCON AIR

Government misses a chance to clarify its position

I was disappointed to read the empty accusations of The Slovak Spectator by Ľudmila Buláková, Spokeswoman of the Slovak Government, (Vol. 3 #13 - July 3-16, 1997) as the response to the Open Letter to the Prime Minister.As a reader of this newspaper, I believe I deserve better information from the head of the government after the fiasco of the so-called referendum. I have learned nothing about his views and I do not have access to the programs quoted in Ms. Buláková's reply. I was genuinely looking forward to an informative reply to the open letter. Instead, I learned that the government can not take fair questions and immediately accuses anybody who does not line up with their views of aggressive, accusational and one-sided politics.

A mosaic of quotes - August 14-27, 1997

Giving young Slovak Canadians a sense of heritage

TORONTO - Generation X has finally arrived at Dundas Street in Toronto, headquarters of the Canadian Slovak League (CSL). Faced with declining membership and internal feuding, CSL's more moderate leaders say they have developed a plan to bring young Slovak Canadians back into the fold."We have to bank on ethnicity," CSL's new director, Mark Stolarik, said. For him and other CSL officials, the next few years are crucial if the league is to help Slovak Canadians preserve their ethnicity. The problem is that Slovaks are an invisible minority in Canada. "If you look and sound like the rest of society, it is easy to melt away," said Juraj Frajkor, chairman of the editorial board at Kanadský Slovák, the official CSL weekly newspaper.

Firm faces future of changing sales, stronger competition

One of the world's largest manufacturers of everyday use products, Procter&Gamble (P&G) is preparing a different sales strategy for a future in Slovakia where its principal competitor, the Austrian firm, Henkel, is beefing up its production facilities here.Many of P&G's 27 brands on the Slovak market, such as Tix detergent, Jar dishwashing liquid, Camay soap, or Pampers diapers for the bambini - are staples in people's everyday lives.But the competition is fierce with multinationals such as Henkel, the Italian Benckiser and the Dutch firm Unilever also on the market. A survey done by Amer-Nielsen, a retail measurement service, shows P&G leading in several key categories on the Slovak market: detergents, fabric softeners and dishwashing liquids, while it runs close in others like hair styling products.

Foreign investors move to London futures exchange

Money mirrors forexThe situation on the Slovak money market mirrored the forex market, with low trading activity. Liquidity on the market has increased in the last several weeks, so most traders now estimate that the banking sector will again fulfill its minimum reserve requirements (PMR) after missing it five consecutive times in the beginning of the summer. Also, the banking sector is not dependent on support from the central bank, a fact seen by the slide in short-term deposits from 23/25 percent on August 11 to 16/20 percent on August 15.

Government economic package springs more leaks than it plugs

The flood waters may have receded in the rest of central Europe, but in Slovakia the government has begun its own battle with rising economic tides that threaten to wash away the country's macroeconomic gains.In July, various ministries announced an economic package that would, like Holland's legendary Hans Brinker, neatly plug the leaks in dikes and save the Slovak economy. However, while repairing the macroeconomic dike, observers say, the government has caused a microeconomic hemorrhage that will ultimately make the flood even worse.The most important measure in the government's original economic package was the July 15 reintroduction of a 7 percent import surcharge affecting almost 80 percent of imports. Its legality is now being reviewed by the European Union (EU), and is scheduled to decrease by 2 percent every 6 months until it is abolished by the end of 1998 (EU regulations require that such surcharges decline regularly by stated amounts).

BCPB turnover was 26.8bn Sk in 1H97

Comenius University short of cash for next year

An ever-growing number of students and an ever-shrinking budget allotted from the Education Ministry has Comenius University in Bratislava seriously considering not opening any classes for the 1998-99 school year or limiting the number of students at all its departments.Comenius officials blame the state, arguing that the school is getting less money, while the government launches three new universities in Trnava, Trenčín and Banská Bystrica, spending a total of 380 million Sk.The schools' creation has been opposed by both the Higher Education Council and existing universities. "They have invested a lot of money into universities that will take about 240 students [at the most]," said Ferdinand Devínsky, the rector of Comenius University, founded in 1919 and Slovakia's oldest university. "If they gave the money [to us instead], we could have accepted 1,000 more students right away,"

Bellwether firms report disappointing 1H97 profits

"VSŽ doesn't need to make an impression that it's strong, that it doesn't have any problems and that it can get away with anything.This spirit then infiltrates the companyÉand the reaction is self-satisfaction, megalomania and waste."Ján Smerek, VSŽ presidentDisappointing first-half financial results of several of Slovakia's flagship companies are making their executives and market analysts nervous even though both insist no major trouble is in sight."These are relatively stable companies, and I would be against any disaster scenario," said a corporate analyst at ING Barings Securities, Vladimír Zlacký. "Their results for the whole year are either going to be the same or a little bit worse than last year."Nevertheless, profits of VSŽ, the giant steel mill in Košice, and of Nafta Gbely, the gas and oil storage company, both cornerstones of the Slovak economy, went down by approximately 50 percent compared to the first half of last year

An American painter in Medzilaborce

It is just after 5 p.m. on a summer Saturday as the steel-framed glass doors shut behind the day's last visitors to the Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art in the northeastern Slovak town of Medzilaborce. Disappointed that several of the museum's 17 Andy Warhol originals, including the famous Campbell's Soup I and II, are out of the country on tour, the tourists wander across the road to check out the town's other main attraction - the Orthodox Church.The church is not especially old - it was built in 1949 - but it tops a hill over the town's main street and its white, layered walls and green onion dome radiate with Russian Renaissance pride. The sightseers scamper up the weedy hill to get a closer look, the setting sun chasing their long shadows up behind them.At the top, they find that, unlike the Warhol museum, this place is still open. And it too houses vibrantly colored paintings.

Mayor Kresánek's dream of Korzo revival coming true in Staré Mesto

It has been decades since Bratislava's Staré Mesto (Old Town) was as vibrant as it has been this summer. This is not by accident. City Hall, in cooperation with the Staré Mesto district office and select private developers, is now gathering fruit from a tree whose seeds were sewn years ago.The area has been largely closed off to cars (indispensable service trucks and snooty embassy vehicles being the exceptions) and key lanes have been laid with paving stones.But foot-friendly streets alone would not draw the throngs that are clustering there now. That takes something more.

Hungarian, Polish leaders upbraid Slovakia

One month after the historic Madrid NATO summit, Slovak Premier Vladimír Mečiar again met with his Hungarian counterpart, Gyula Horn, and Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski. But this time it was different. Now that Hungary and Poland are in the NATO and European Union (EU) clubs and Slovakia has been left out, at least for now, both Horn and Kwasniewski clearly acted as if they now had the upper hand.At their meeting in the northwest Hungarian town of Györ on August 15, Horn presented Mečiar with a memorandum of how the Hungarian government wants the fundamental bilateral treaty both leaders signed more than two years ago in Paris to be implemented."In these matters there has been no genuine step forward in the last three years, and it is now time that the commitments undertaken by the Slovak party should finally be implemented," Horn told a news conference after a private, three-hour discussion with the Slovak prime minister.

May foreign debt at $8.48bn

Changes at top of Slovak Railways, Columbex, McDonald's

Michal Lazar, 40, has become the general director for Železnice Slovenskej Republiky (Slovak Railways, ŽSR), taking his position at the end of June.Coming from the computer firm Columbex, Lazar (pictured below) mainly wants to negotiate the restructuring of ŽSR's payment calendars with Slovak banks and drive the firm to obtain long-term loans with foreign banks. To be able to do this, Lazar said, "the firm and the political situation has to be stable."Lazar graduated from Comenius University's Law Faculty in 1980, obtaining a degree in international law and trade. Lazar's first career stop was at Omnia, a foreign trade company where he was responsible for exporting engineering products to Africa and Asia.

Surprising Slovak market shows strong mobile phone sales

The success of GSM and mobile phones on the Slovak market has surprised industry analysts and the providers themselves. In Slovakia, it is illegal for GSM providers to subsidize handset prices as they do in other countries, so Slovak customers often end up paying several times the price for a similar model bought in Prague or Budapest. But high prices have yet to dampen interest.GSM Providers ReflectThe buoyancy of Slovakia's mobile telephone market has been a source of deep satisfaction to the country's GSM providers. Globtel's General Director Bruno Duthoit said that the mobile phone penetration rate of the total Slovak population has risen from 0.5% in December, 1996 to 2% today. "The market is excellent," he said. EuroTel Director Artur Bobovnický agreed, predicting further growth for the second half of this year. "The Slovak market was always 40-60 in terms of growth [ratio]," said Bobovnický.

In the High Tatras, near Popradské Pleso, stands...

The desire for human beings to conquer giant mountains, to get closer to the sky, to reach remote peaks and be free like a bird, is everlasting. Many times this luring drive has caused people to overestimate their own stamina and abilities. And the High Tatras - beautiful but merciless mountains - claim new victims each year.It was the painter Otakar Stafl (1884-1945) who came up with the idea of setting up a symbolic cemetery in the High Tatras dedicated to lost alpinists. Stafl loved the Tatra mountains. He was a good climber and skier and the natural beauty of the Tatras was his favorite painting motif. In 1932 he sent a proposal for this "cemetery without graves" to the Czechoslovak Tourist Club (CTC).

Electricity raised 10% for businesses