(CIANEWS) - The Czech Republic has exhausted all previous growth factors, lost its competitive advantages and fallen into the so-called middle-income trap. Countries catching up to the level of economically developed states may find themselves in it. This follows from the analysis of the Chamber of Commerce of the Czech Republic (HK), with the fact that the consequence will be long-term economic stagnation, a slowdown in wage growth and the population's standard of living. While by 2009 the performance of the Czech economy had approached the EU average by 14 percentage points, for the entire period after that year it was only by 4 percentage points. For comparison, Poland has approached the EU average by 20 percentage points since 2009. The problem with the current Czech economy is that it generates only low added value.