The government wants to involve the state-owned National Development Bank (NDB) in the construction of affordable rental housing. The cabinet is also planning to amend the law on the State Fund for Investment Support (SFPI), which supports housing development in the Czech Republic. This is to support the government’s commitment that up to 10,000 extra rental flats could be built per year by the end of the parliamentary term. This is according to the Cabinet Office’s updated programme statement published today.
The government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) has declared from the beginning that it supports the development of all types of housing (owner-occupied, rental and cooperative). Therefore, it wants to prepare new financial instruments for the construction of affordable rental housing in the form of, for example, fund financing or loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and state guarantees for loans. The National Development Bank is to be newly involved in this activity.
The NRB was established in 1992 as the Czech-Moravian Guarantee and Development Bank and has been operating under a new name since September 2021. Its sole shareholder is the Czech Republic, represented by the Ministries of Industry, Finance and Regional Development. The bank offers loans to entrepreneurs at zero or preferential interest rates. Last year, it provided loans and guarantees to entrepreneurs worth CZK 22.5 billion. It made another CZK 1 billion or so available for the development of public infrastructure.
In the housing sector, the government statement also added that a wider range of financial sources, including the National Recovery Plan, are to be used to increase the construction of rental housing.
The amendment to the law on the State Investment Support Fund is intended to allow the fund to operate more flexibly and expand the possibility of targeting programmes, Veronika Hešíková, a spokeswoman for the Regional Development Ministry, told the Czech News Agency. The government said in a statement that more money should be moved to the SFPI for innovative financial instruments to support housing. This is to include funds for the preparation of project documentation, property buyouts and the regeneration of brownfields for housing purposes, as well as for the reconstruction of neglected housing stock.
In the area of public procurement, the government has newly formulated that by 2024 it will set up a functional model for central commodity procurement to ensure a reduction in administrative burden for different levels of procuring entities, especially on the basis of e-shop or other efficient forms of public procurement.
On tourism, it has changed the name of the Tourism Act to the Tourism Management and Development Act, which it plans to introduce by the end of this year. In it, she wants to improve coordination between ministries, local governments and professional organisations, and better link public and private interests. In a new statement, it confirmed that the launch of the e-Tourist system has been pushed back by a year to 2025.
Source: CTK
