Press Advisories

4. 1. 202118:25

Government approves further aid for closed premises, wants to extend easier administration of social benefits during pandemic

Businessmen who have had to close their premises since October as a result of the government decree will receive additional financial assistance from the state to the value of CZK 400 per employee. This was approved by the government of Andrej Babiš at its first meeting of the New Year on Monday, 4 January 2021.

Support for closed premises will be provided in the form of a subsidy for operating costs, applied retrospectively to the period from 14 October 2020 to 10 January 2021, with the option that this final deadline may be extended if the epidemic situation continues to require the closure of these establishments; it will be paid out only for those days when business operations were directly restricted on the basis of the crisis measures, primarily through a ban on the presence of the public in premises, but also in other ways. The first call of the subsidy programme named COVID - Gastro - Closed premises will have 2.5 billion crowns made available. Employees will include both those directly employed and any self-employed persons.

The cabinet will also present to Parliament a draft amendment to the Act on certain adjustments to state social support benefits and the care allowance in connection with the state of emergency during the epidemic. The amendment is intended to help families with children who are economically at risk from the Covid-19 pandemic by not considering any care allowance paid out for the purposes of decisive income for state social support benefits and for increasing the care allowance for the calendar months of January 2021 to September 2021. For the purposes of entitlement to child benefit at the higher rate, the government wants to introduce a presumption of fulfilment of the set "working" income in the calendar month in which the parent was entitled to care allowance, even if he/she was not paid care allowance in that calendar month.

The government also approved a proposal to provide an investment incentive to the joint-stock company Pars nova. The company, which is part of the ŠKODA TRANSPORTATION group, wants to invest 463 million crowns in its Šumperk plant to expand the modernization and maintenance of rolling stock and the production of spare parts, thus creating 81 new jobs in a region with above-average unemployment in the Czech Republic. It plans inter alia to revitalize a brownfield site located near its current premises and at the same time to use the space released by the demolition of a run-down building. The government has therefore granted its request for an investment incentive in the form of a tax rebate of up to 25 percent of the eligible costs, i.e. 114.625 million crowns.

The government also noted a new protective measure from the Ministry of Health (in Czech language) concerning the conditions for entry into the Czech Republic. The change, effective from 5 January, mainly affects people coming from Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The government also familiarised itself today with information from the Ministry of Transport on the planned public contract for an information campaign to electronicize the agendas of the Ministry of Transport, which will focus on the promotion of electronic motorway tolls. It also returned to the intended purchase of the real estate complex of the chateau in Petrkov and noted information from the Minister of Culture on the public contract currently under preparation, the contracting authority for which is the future owner of the National Literature Memorial complex. The chateau and its surroundings are associated with the life and work of the important Czech poet, graphic artist and translator Bohuslav Reynek and his wife, the French poet Suzanne Renaud.

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