Prague, Aug 1 (CTK) – The Czech Culture Ministry’s budget for 2018 might increase by hundreds of millions of crowns beyond the proposed 13.2 billion, Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) told journalists after a meeting with Finance Minister Ivan Pilny (ANO) today.
Herman said they had discussed the budget rise of this level.
The priorities are the salaries of the employees in the culture sector, which are still below the average in the country, and live art, he added.
The proposed Culture Ministry’s budget for 2018 is 0.5 billion higher than this year.
Talks on the budget rise in the culture sector will continue also because the money for the purchase of the pig farm in Lety, south Bohemia, situated at the site of a former Nazi camp for the Roma, by the state might be released from the Culture Ministry’s budget, Herman told CTK.
The general meeting of the farm’s owner, the AGPI firm, gave consent to the transfer of complex to the state on Monday. Herman said the contract of purchase may be signed in early September. Neither the state nor the firm have released the purchasing price.
A major part of the Culture Ministry’s budget also goes to the churches, the clergymen’s salaries and the financial compensation within the return of the church property confiscated by the communist regime. The annual compensation amounts to some 3.5 billion crowns.
According to the restitution law from 2012, churches are returned land and real estate worth 75 billion, confiscated from them by the communist regime, and given 59 billion crowns plus inflation in financial compensation for unreturned property during the following 30 years. Simultaneously, the state isgradually ceasing financing churches.
The 2018 draft state budget’s expenditures, including the EU subsidies, are projected at 1,342 billion crowns and the revenues at 1,292 billion. The deficit is to amount to 50 billion crowns.
The government must approve the budget bill and send it to the Chamber of Deputies by the end of September.
($1=22.240 crowns)
