Last year, the state agency CzechInvest negotiated three investment projects in the Pilsen region worth CZK 1.73 billion. The year before, the companies promised to implement 11 projects in the region in the amount of over seven billion crowns through CzechInvest. The year-on-year decrease was caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the amendment to the Investment Incentives Act. This follows from the agency’s statistics, which are available to ČTK. However, 2019 was a record year in the region in recent years, more than double the previous year.
Last year, CzechInvest negotiated 27 investment projects worth 15.3 billion crowns throughout the Czech Republic. A year earlier, there were 94 projects in the amount of CZK 54.7 billion. However, the share of investments with high added value increased significantly, last year it was two thirds, in 2019 only about one fifth. Apart from Czech companies, Americans, Japanese and Finns intend to invest the most money in the Czech Republic. Of the agreed investments, 80 percent are expansion of companies already based in the Czech Republic.
Last year, the Pilsen Region recorded the third highest volume of agreed investments from 14 regions of the Czech Republic. The second place was Vysočina and the most successful was Central Bohemia, which chose four companies and plans to invest over CZK 6.1 billion and create 1,250 jobs.
Thanks to new projects, three companies in the Plzeň Region plan to employ 114 people, a year earlier 771 new positions were to be created in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, wood processing, production of parts for aircraft and motor vehicles.
“Last year, there is a total of one new project and two expansions. Two projects concern production, one is a technology center. In terms of sectors, these are advanced materials and nanotechnologies, the food and electronics sectors,” said CzechInvest spokeswoman Jana Kohoutová. According to her, one of the projects is the Pilsen-based Škoda Electric, which has successfully applied for investment incentives.
Škoda Electric, part of Škoda Transportation from the PPF Group, is the largest European manufacturer of trolleybuses. So far, it has supplied about 14,500 of them to the domestic and foreign markets. The company with its own development also offers several types of battery electric buses, traction drives and motors for locomotives, trams, electric units, metro and mining vehicles. It employs 760 people, of which 200 are specialists in development and construction.
The company will invest about a quarter of a billion crowns in expanding production and create 90 new jobs. The annual capacity will be expanded from the current 210 trolleybuses and electric buses by 50 vehicles, from 240 sets of traction drives to 290 and instead of the current 3,000 traction motors it will be able to produce 5,000. Škoda Electric expects growing demand for electric traction in public transport. In 2019, it earned CZK 144 million with revenues of CZK 2.23 billion.
Source: CTK
