IMF calls government’s public finance reforms insufficient

In a news conference held on Tuesday, the head of the International Monetary Fund in the Czech Republic, Subhash Thakur, warned that the package of reforms the Czech government voted for in August would not consolidate the country’s finances sufficiently. He said that the reforms would only shore up the country’s finances in the short term, and called for further pension and social benefit reforms. He said that he approved of the move away from direct taxation and towards indirect taxation in the government’s public finance reform package, but called the changes unambitious overall. Despite this, Mr Thakur said that 2007 was proving a very good year for the Czech economy. Growth was strengthened by domestic consumption, and inflation, he said, remained low. According to the IMF, the Czech economy is stable, and remains unblighted by the problems that many of the world’s major economies are currently facing.