Government begins to debate state budget proposal

The Czech government has begun discussing Finance Minister Jan Fischer’s state budget proposal for next year, and the debate will continue until the end of September before a final version is given approval, the country’s interim prime minister, Jiří Rusnok, said on Wednesday. Under the proposal next year’s deficit should be 110 billion crowns – five billion higher than the proposal planned by the previous centre-right government led by Petr Nečas. The finance minister said that individual ministries had requests for increases adding up to 35 billion crowns. He stressed it would not to be possible to fulfil all requests although the government would debate the matter. On September 20, members of the so-called tripartite – union, business and government leaders – will also debate the budget prior to its approval by the cabinet.