Confederation declared 2015 the Year of Industry

About five hundred representatives of Czech industrial companies, research organizations and universities have took part in the annual congress of the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic opened at the beginning of the International Engineering Fair in Brno on Monday 29^th September.

At its congress, which is a top discussion platform for Czech business and government, the Confederation declared 2015 the Year of Industry and technological education. This project was greeted by the Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka and several members of his cabintet who personally have come to the congress.

The participants in the discussion forum pointed out at one of the key problems of the competitiveness of the Czech Republic, namely the disproportion between half a million unemployed persons of today and the in the long-term unsatissfied demand for dozens of thousand people with technological education being looked for by the Czech industrial companies.

„We want to change the perception of the industry and technological education in the Czech Republic,“ the Confederation’s president Jaroslav Hanák said in his speech. „We want to persuade the public that technically educated persons will have a better future than many people with purely humanities education.“

The high quality and high technological level of industrial companies are the most important factors in improving the competitiveness of the Czech Republic which has been confirmed during the recent financial and economic crisis.

Other key topics discussed at the congress were the problems of transport infrastructure, too slow construction of highways and insufficient construction preparedness.

„The members of Czech parliament have to help to speed up the legislative, for example, the approval of the Law on Public Procurements, the Building Law or Law on Public Procurements Contracting,“ Hanák stressed.

At the Confederation of Industry congress, Prime Minister Sobotka promissed to prepare a new State Energy Policy and State Raw Materials Policy before the end of this year. „Within a month, we will prepare on the governmental level a law that should help to the large industrial companies with the burden represented by the renewable energy resources,“ Sobotka said.