Summary of newsmakers from the previous day 2. 5. 2005

Farmers might be left with 400,000 tons of corn at storehouses until the harvest

Domestic corn growers will be most likely left with approximately 400,000 tons of corn at their storehouses until the next harvest. At the beginning of April there were roughly 1.9 million tons at cornlofts from the last year´s bumper harvest. However, neither intervention purchases, export nor feeding will not reduce such a surplus. „The government started to buy the corn quite late,“ said today Jan Záhora, secretary of the Agrarian Chamber. He claims there is also a trouble with concentration of supplies only to some districts, above all those with a developed grain production. For example, Prague, Svitavy, Brno as well as Vyškov, Zlín or Kroměříž districts dispose of supplies of more than 10,000 tons. „Moreover, corn in some storehouses does not meet the requirements of intervention purchase,“ stated Záhorka.

EU has to alter the regime of sugar export

Brazil, Australia and Thailand have complainted at the WTO about illegally high export subvention for sugar export from the European Union. In August 2004 arbitrators already decided in favour of the European Union, which had appealed to the WTO Appeal Comittee. Nevertheless, nothing was changed on the previous decision. According to the spokesperson of the agricultural commission, Michael Mann, the European Union will respect the decision of the World Trade Organisation. It means that the producers´ subvention will be cut down even more than the European Commission had planned. Last year the European Commission intended to significantly reform the sugar regime within the European Union and to reduce guaranteed purchase prices of sugar. At that time, the proposal was facing a strong opposition of producers and EU member states, which feared a liquidation of their sugar industry.

President didn´t sign or veto the act on renewable resources

Mr. Klaus castigated the act in his comments, however, he didn´t mention why he had not veto it. He reproached the bill to be an implementation of the European directive into the Czech legal system, although it was much harsher. He suggests that a list of renewable resources follows the military ecological propaganda and inconceivably avoids nuclear energy.

Marketing programme draws quite a big attention

The presumption of any business success is a quality product offered at a competible price. However, such a product should also have good promotion. This is exactly the objective of the Marketing programme that belongs to the Operational programme on industry and business. The programme is to contribute to the development of SMEs activities at foreign markets and to increase their export opportunities.