Many of my friends in the real economy say that the Czech Republic is a country where everything is produced, from wings for Airbus and Embraer aircraft (we are also the biggest producer of ultralight planes in the world, for instance), through turbines, cars, buses, locomotives and guns to bearings, brushes and semtex. Whatever you need to produce you will always find at least one factory capable of making it, the anecdotic evidence seems to be suggesting. As exports obviously feed this country, and as we are so close to Germany and the Germanspeaking world, you won’t be surprised to learn that Germany is by far our biggest trading partner, with more than 30% of our exports going there and with the biggest proportion of foreign investment in the Czech Republic coming from Germany. (The UK is roughly the tenth or eleventh biggest source of investment for this country.) But you might be surprised when I tell you that the Czech Republic is one of the few countries in the world that has a trade surplus, not a trade deficit, with Germany. This is also quite unique. But it’s not all about the economy, so let me turn to a couple of small curiosities which might be of interest for this audience. I believe some of you use contact lenses, which were invented by the Czech scientist Otto Wichterle, as well as nylon, for instance. The Czech scientist Jan Jansky was the first to classify blood into four groups.
This goes back to the 19th century, to the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, when this part of the empire used to be its industrial undisputed powerhouse. This tradition has survived through wars and totalitarian regimes to the present day. Even now, the Czech Republic is the country with the highest ratio of industrial production to GDP in the whole of the EU and the ratio is higher than in Germany, a fact which many do not know. And it has actually been rising rather than falling over the last 10 years or so. This is manifested in the fact that the Czech Republic is the second biggest producer of cars per head in the world. Moreover, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – which formed a single state until 1993 – are together by far the biggest car-producing countries in the world in per capita terms. With 150 cars produced per every 1,000 citizens these two countries are well ahead of South Korea and Germany combined in per head metrics. So whenever you drive your Skoda, Hyundai, Peugeot, Kia, Volkswagen or even Porsche, don’t be surprised to learn that they were actually manufactured within a radius of 300 kilometres of Prague. By the way, Ferdinand Porsche, the 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  founder of the Porsche car manufacturer, was also born here, 100 kilometres north of Prague.