Finance Minister to chop budget, freeze wages to ease next year’s deficit

The Minister of Finance, Eduard Janota, has announced he intends to keep the budget deficit for next year to 170 billion crowns by reducing parts of the budget by up to 20 percent and freezing government wages. Speaking on Czech Television on Sunday, Mr Janota said that the 223 billion crown deficit he expects is unacceptable, and that he intended to reduce it via the 18% of expenditures that the finance minister is capable of affecting. The plan will be to strip some chapters of the budget by up to 20%, giving priority support to science, research, education and infrastructure.