A Half Of Czech Business Is Owned By Foreigners

A Half Of Czech Business Is Owned By Foreigners

According to the data recently published by the Czech information agency ČEKIA, almost a half of Czech business (in monetary terms) is owned by foreigners. If share of the registered capital is taken into account, the leaders are citizens of the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. In terms of number of the registered companies the natives of Russia, Germany and Ukraine dominate.

A ČEKIA analyst Peter Stepanov explained: "The share of domestic players among the registered companies is about 57%, which reached 2.078 trillion crowns by the end of the last year. The dominance of Czech capital is observed among small and middle companies".

The amount of foreign capital during last three years increased almost by CZK 200 billion, while the amount of Czech capital during the same period of time increased less than by CZK 150 billion.

Top 15 of the countries whose capital is mostly represented in the Czech Republic is as follows:

Netherlands CZK 230.1 billion
Germany CZK 110.5 billion
Austria CZK 89.5 billion
Luxemburg CZK 65.0 billion
France CZK 51.7 billion
Cyprus CZK 39.4 billion
Switzerland CZK 38.8 billion
Spain CZK 35.7 billion
Great Britain CZK 31.2 billion
USA CZK 29.5 billion
Japan CZK 26.9 billion
Slovakia CZK 21.9 billion
South Korea CZK 18.8 billion
Belgium CZK 16.5 billion
Poland CZK 14.3 billion

According to the above mentioned expert the dominance of Dutch capital is easily explicaple (its share totals about 25%), because Czech companies are often registered in the Netherlands on purpose of so called taxes optimization. Comparatively small number of Dutch companies is represented in the Czech Republic because they tend to belong to big business.

Small companies are often owened by Russian citizens. The majority of such firms belong to retail and the sphere of services, because these sectors are characterized by low entry barriers.
 

Date: 17/03/2010