On Wednesday, Czech MPs approved a record budget deficit amounting to 500 billion korunas (€18.76 billion).
The Chamber of Deputies discussed this year´s state budget deficit for more than four hours. So far, the deficit in 2020 will be the highest in Czech history.
The discussion was prolonged mainly by the opposition criticizing the government for not trying to save money on certain projects. However, according to the government, investments are the only way out of the crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic.
Within the discussion on the state budget, MPs also approved the proposal of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, who suggested allocating more money to building new roads and fighting the bark beetle that causes unprecedented damage to Czech forests.
The record deficit is more than double the one seen in 2009, which had been the highest until this year. The negative budget balance at that time reached 192.4 billion korunas (€7.23 billion). Among other things, the high budget deficit was caused mainly by the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, when many multinational companies went bankrupt.
Title image: In this Wednesday, June 26, 2019, file photo, the Czech Republic’s Prime Minister Andrej Babis looks up during a parliament session in Prague. On Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019, the Czech Republic’s prosecutor general overturned a previous decision by the prosecution to drop charges against Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis over alleged fraud involving European Union subsidies. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek, File)
