Czech army to buy Tatra trucks

The Czech army is to buy close to a thousand off-road trucks from domestic truck manufacturer Tatra, Defence Minister Karel Kuhnl told journalists on Friday. The order is worth around 5 billion crowns /200 million dollars/. The first Tatras are to be delivered next year and will replace the aging Praga V3Ss and Soviet trucks. A rival company has complained that the contract was awarded without a tender but the army chief of staff Pavel Stefka said that in this case a tender was not necessary. This view was supported by Parliament's Defence a Security committees.