Deputies safeguard highway projects by drawing on privatisation fund

Lower house deputies on Friday continued the financial juggling stemming from Wednesday’s budget vote. They voted to top up the missing 5.1 billion crowns from the 2010 transport infrastructure fund, which is mainly used for new motorway projects, with funds from the Ministry of Finance’s privatisation fund. The decision means that threatened delays to completion of highway and motorway projects should not occur next year because of cash shortfalls.

Social Democrat deputy and former finance minister Bohuslav Sobotka said the off-budget privatisation fund had 16.5 billion on its account. The Ministry of Finance planned to pump a large part of this sum for cleaning up past ecological pollution with the bill for this expected to run into around 10 billion crowns.