Summary of newspapers of the previous days – 4. – 6. 11. 2011

Foods in discounts are cost effective and quality

Foods sold in discount shop chains are not worse than brand-name products. A new actual investigation Stiftung Warentest (German organization for protection of consumers) came to a conclusion that private marks of particular discounts are of high quality. There are often abysmal differences between prices of comparable products in discounts and supermarkets. On the whole, 37 actual tests were carried out within which almost 900 products were evaluated. Similar investigation results are published in November issue of a journal Test.

Farmers protect land

As a crime, an absolute dirty business Jan Veleba, the president of Agrarian Chamber qualified a proposal of economic committee for non-payment of levy for extraction of land from the agricultural land fund for traffic and industrial buildings which as a change in law on protection of agricultural fund is “a dollop” to an amendment of law on supported energy resources. At yesterday´s press conference, Veleba emphasized that farmers have battle for enactment of levy, which happened on the 1st January 2011, for three years because as many as 13 to 15 hectares of agricultural land (there are 4.2 mil. ha in total in the CR) run low daily owing to building projects, mostly of the highest soil quality classes. He pointed out a fact that there is a wide amount of desolate industrial zones, so called brownfields (brown fields of ground plans), in the CR.

Coalition refused to solve situation of Lesy ČR at parliamentary meeting

The parliament will not deal with economy and tenders of the state enterprise Lesy ČR at an extraordinary meeting today. The opposite ČSSD ask for it supported by KSČM. However, according to expectation, the government coalition did not support approval of programme of this session. So, the negotiation finished after 50 minutes which were fulfilled by speeches mainly of representatives of the opposition and the Minister of Agriculture Petr Bendl (ODS). “It is not suitable time now to open this discussion at the moment when the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) stopped the tender (for forestry works and timber harvesting in state forests after 2012)”, the minister stated. According to him the tender was not offered contrary to law. Nevertheless, Bendl doubts of its conditions.

Rice exports from Thailand will probably decrease

Thailand´s association of rice exporters think that export of rice from a country which is the biggest exporter of the commodity in the world will decrease in the period from November to January by 50 %. Average monthly exports, which have been achieved in the first 9 months, should decrease from 1 million tonnes to 500 000 tonnes. One of causes is purchases of offices which increased domestic prices and decreased competitiveness of the commodity abroad. Other infavourable news is the biggest floods in the country over the last 50 years which damaged the crop.