Prague, March 20 (CTK) – All Czech contracts for the removal of the remaining environmental damage will be signed within 12 years and their total price should be 30 billion crowns, even though the state guarantees provided for their removal are 101 billion crowns, Finance Minister Andrej Babis said on Monday.
He said the ministry is likely to save a lot of money.
“Thanks to the transparent approach to the placement of the public contracts we manage to markedly lower their price to less than one third of the expected sum,” Babis told journalists.
All the contracts would be placed based on public tenders.
Deputy Finance Minister Ondrej Zavodsky said the last tender should be declared in the autumn of 2026.
Babis said the damage may be removed sooner also thanks to the lowered price of work.
The Finance Ministry has contracts for the removal of environmental damage with 158 firms and total state guarantees of 153 billion crowns. Over 51 billion crowns of this sum has been drawn so far.
In the contracts, the state has pledged to cover the costs of the removal of environmental damage spent by the owners of the contaminated land. The pledge is enforceable by law. If the state fails to fulfil it, it may face suits and arbitrations.
Between 1991 and the end of 2015, the ministry signed contracts on state guarantees for environmental damage removal worth 176 billion crowns.
The ministry plans to spend approximately three billion crowns a year on the removal of the damage.
Zavodsky said the most expensive contract placed this year would be the clean-up of the contaminated area Aglomerace Vitkovice in northern Moravia. The price is estimated at 750 million crowns, he said.
