Summary of newsmakers from the previous day 19.7.2005

Forest owners’ gross profit fell in average to 480 crowns per ha last year

Forest owners earned less last year and their gross profit including state grants for farming was in average 480 crowns per hectare in comparison with roughly 530 crowns in 2003. It results from data of the Ministry of Agriculture. According to an office, decreased yields from wood sale were only partially balanced by costs savings and increase of work productivity. State forests showed improvement with a profit of 356 crowns from hectare in the comparison with 205 crown in the year before last. According to disposable data the state public enterprise Forest CR increased its net profit last year threefold to 469 million crowns. It controls about a half of all forest in the country. Private forests are the worse for it; their profit per hectare fell from 1254 to 678 crowns. Municipal forests showed a decrease by 75 crowns to 674 crowns from hectare.

Support of environment from European funds grows further

Other 111 projects from environmental area have gained a support from European funds. Karolína Šůlová, the spokeswoman of the Ministry of Environment CR (MŽP) informed about it. According to her data a support came in the CR in frame of Operational Programs (OP) Infrastructure and Development of Human Resources. ‘I was fairly surprised by a quality of many projects. I consider it as an evidence that neither applicants nor workers of the environment resort did underestimate the preparation for drawing of means from the European Union’, stated the Minister of Environment Libor Ambrozek.

Sugar beet growers are frightened with reform

Czech sugar beet growers demonstrated on Monday in Brussels. Representatives of domestic farmers took in with five thousands of colleagues from other European countries who strived to turn a forthcoming reform of quotas and dotations with which the European Union regulates sugar production. The reform of so called sugar order was forced by the World Trade Organization WTO. It dislikes that Europe exports its endowed beet sugar while it protects its own market against imports of cheaper cane sweetener from oversea.

Conflagration devastate European south

Sultry heats, droughts and conflagrations devastate Pyrenean peninsula. In Spain members of voluntary firemen unit died in fire. It is a tragedy which Spain doesn’t remember whole decades. In forest fire nearby the town Guadalajara 11 voluntary firemen died on Sunday early in the evening and one lied in a critical state in a hospital yesterday. The conflagration, which broke out on Sunday afternoon, radiated in three directions. The main direction, in which flames reached a width of eight kilometers, the firemen got under control. However, the flames surround several of them and nobody could help them. A current fire near Guadalajara is the worst in last fifteen years. At some places firemen fought still yesterday late evening. The conflagration arose from a fire on which people roasted meat. The flames were then extended by a strong wind.