Stakeholders must be more involved in recovery plan preparations

To restore the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Czech Republic should receive approximately CZK 171 billion from the Recovery and Resilience Facility in the form of grants. Further financial resources from the EU budget will be available in the form of loans. The Czech government is now working on a national recovery plan, which is a necessary condition for drawing the funds. Opinions of a broad variety of stakeholders to the Czech plan were presented at an online discussion co-organized on 10^th March by CEBRE.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, who coordinates the preparation of the plan, funds from the national recovery plan will be distributed in accordance with the 6 pillars of the economic strategy. It pointed out that the available resources won’t be enough to satisfy all the demands that come from the public and the ministries. The main areas that the government wants to focus on are digitization (27%) in form of digitization of education, social security, justice or the construction of high-speed networks.

The second important area will be the green transformation, directed to sustainable and safe transport, as well as to clean mobility, where the government aims to support alternative drives from electricity or hydrogen. An allocation of CZK 18 billion has been set aside for the area of education, and CZK 10 billion should go to the area of the labour market, including retraining, basic research (5 billion), applied research (7.5 billion), and healthcare (15 billion).

CEBRE founders stressed that the money from the facility must be used to kick-start economic growth and at the same time help to implement reforms and investments that will help transform the economy, especially in the green and digital areas. They also pointed out that the plan must not prioritize the public sector over the private sector, which is the engine of economic recovery.

Last but not least, it is absolutely necessary to involve businesses, as well as other stakeholders, in the preparations of the recovery plan, which has not been the case so far. The plan should be forwarded to the European Commission by the end of April.