The Budget Committee left the Supreme Audit Office a quarter of a billion for a new headquarters

Prague - The draft state budget for next year will still include 250 million crowns allocated for the purchase of a new seat for the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ) even after today. The House Budget Committee did not accept the amendment proposed by two ODS MPs during today's discussion of the state budget, who wanted to either reduce this amount or completely transfer it to the government budget reserve.
     "I appreciate the reasonable approach of the majority of the members of the Budget Committee, who voted against eliminating the funds for the purchase of a new seat for the NKÚ. If this proposal had passed, the office would find itself in a very difficult situation," said NKÚ Vice-President Miloslav Kala to ČTK.
     MP Radim Jirout (ODS) proposed to transfer the allocated quarter-billion entirely to the government budget reserve. His party colleague and the committee chairman Pavel Suchánek wanted to reduce it by 150 million crowns. Suchánek defended the proposal not only due to the lack of funds in the budget, but also by stating that the state owns so many buildings that purchasing a new one is unnecessary. He also mentioned that furniture and equipment worth 150 million crowns would remain in the current seat, which the office would have to purchase again for the same amount.
     The proposal was opposed by the present opposition MPs, who are also members of the supervisory committee. Václav Votava (ČSSD) argued, for example, that the government's relocation commission did not offer any suitable building to the office. According to the chairman of the supervisory committee Vojtěch Filip, the MPs would thus place the office in an unsolvable situation, as the NKÚ has already announced a competition for the acquisition of a new building and is now dealing with the received offers. "What is happening here means that it should not be counted on, and it essentially puts the vice-president of the NKÚ in an unsolvable situation," Filip told ČTK.
     Kala reminded that the office must resolve the relocation to a new seat by the end of September next year when its contract for the current seat expires. "Finding an economically advantageous rental in such a tight timeframe could put us in a situation where we could be pushed into an uneconomical solution to the question of the NKÚ's next seat," added Kala.
     Neither of the proposals ultimately received a majority of votes. The opposition social democrats mainly voted against them, to which ODS MPs also joined. The present Deputy Minister of Finance Jan Gregor also opposed them.
     The office is located in rented premises in the Tokovo building in Prague's Holešovice. MPs from the supervisory committee have been criticizing this lease as overpriced for several years. Since the beginning of the lease in the Tokovo building in 2007 until June 30 of this year, the NKÚ has paid 398 million crowns in rent. The government's relocation commission offered buildings to the office, for example, in Jihlava or Vyškov. The MPs from the supervisory committee did not hold back critical words towards the commission during the discussion of this information.