Economy ministry proposes simplification of investment aid rules.

Economy ministry proposes simplification of investment aid rules. The rules for disbursing of state investment support should be relaxed till the end of the year, the economy ministry proposed. The new rules would remove the investment location as a criterion for approving aid and the minimum of jobs created for state support eligibility would be reduced from 1,000 to 800. Projects, concentrating on science and R&D, would be no longer considered for investment incentives and support for employee training would be cancelled from the support schemes. The ministry explained that these draft changes aimed to speed up the process of approving investment aid and would thus avoid the process to be governed by the new EU rules, taking force from the beginning of next year. It stressed that this threatened to damage the investor confidence since the new EU aid procedure might exclude some projects from being eligible for state aid, even though the investors already negotiated support with the cabinet. The proposed simplified rules by the ministry would concern investment projects with an aggregate cost of SKK 32bn and planned total job creation of 12,000 places.