EduMin promises to save CZK 1.5bn of required CZK 3bn

Prague, July 29 (CTK) - Czech Education Minister Josef Dobes (Public Affairs, VV) yesterday said he would not lower teachers' pay and therefore his ministry will save maximally 1.5 billion crowns by end-2010, a mere half of what it is supposed to save according to an austerity plan the government approved on Wednesday.

All ministries are to freeze 10.2 billion crowns altogether from their 2010 budgets. The largest cuts, over 3 billion crowns, are expected from the Education Ministry.

"By no means will I reduce the wages of the staff in regional schools. That is why the sum I can save in this fiscal year is 1.5 billion crowns at the most," Dobes writes on the ministry's website.

He says he is aware that the cabinet wants to be a government of budget responsibility. On the other hand, however, the government has declared education as its priority. A cut in the spending on regional schools, that would touch on teachers' wages, would be at sharp variance with this aim, Dobes emphasises.

The Education Ministry's budget was reduced once before this year, by 1.6 billion crowns, within the first wave of austerity measures proposed by the previous finance minister.

The goal of the new measures, proposed by the present Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek and approved by the cabinet on Wednesday, is to keep the public finance deficit at 5.3 percent of GDP.

Apart from the saving, however, the government decided to earmark extra 2.1 billion crowns for teachers' pay.

The government asked Kalousek (TOP 09) to draft an analysis by September 30 that would assess whether the frozen money can be unfrozen at some ministries.

VV chairman Radek John said the VV need not support the 2011 state budget unless it is satisfied with the analysis' result.

John is the deputy PM and interior minister in the new centre-right cabinet led by the Civic Democrats (ODS).

Earlier this week, the VV criticised Kalousek's plan for reckoning with the largest cuts at the ministries of education, interior and transport, all controlled by the VV.

Reacting to this, Kalousek argued that each ministry is supposed to freeze 2.5 percent of its expenditures, not including mandatory ones. The higher the expenditures, the higher is the sum the ministry is supposed to save, he said.

John even threatened that the VV might veto the plan at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, which, however, eventually did not happen.

The state revenues in 2010 are expected to be 28.2 billion crowns lower than originally projected, which is why Kalousek wants the expenditures to decline accordingly as well. The cuts are not to touch on mandatory expenditures such as pension and welfare benefits.

($1=19.233 crowns)