Effectiveness of the State Tourism Support Programme
Press Release – November 28, 2008
From April to August 2008, auditors from the Supreme Audit Office (SAO) aimed at financial resources used for implementation of the State Tourism Support Programme thus taking up after a previous auditing operation No. 03/06, which was performed in 2003. The utilized state budget funds amounted to CZK 595 million from 2004 to 2007.
“The Ministry for Regional Development set project goals widely and without realistic specifications. Neither did the ministry paid sufficient attention to the assessment processes in the matter of projects, which were chosen for implementation in the period from 2005 to 2007. Already in 2003, the auditors who performed a previous audit of the Programme pointed out that the projects’ assessment process was not transparent“, said František Dohnal, president of the SAO.
The ministry did not follow specifications or conditions set in the project documentation and in the application guidelines and that is why the maximum cost limits were exceeded in many cases. The ministry approached comparable projects unequally when setting their terms and targets.
“In the frame of the programme for supporting sports and recreational activities, the Ministry for Regional Development granted projects, which did not contribute to the tourist trade’s development. For example, funds amounting over CZK 1.5 million were allocated for a handball centre’s flooring, in spite the facility is used by handball extra-league top players at 80 per cent of the time while the local university shares the remaining 20 % of the scheduled practices with other athletic teams. Grant recipients kept violating obligatory regulations, which were included into the decree on the state budget funds earmarked for the Programme’s implementation. Such insufficiencies illustrate the fact that the ministry did not thoroughly monitor the process of the grants’ utilization, neither controlled how the conditions were kept“, said Dohnal.
The auditing operation was included into the 2008 Audit plan of the SAO under No 08/15. Petr Skála, Member of the SAO Board, controlled the operation and drew up the audit report as well.
Radka Burketová
Press Speaker
Supreme Audit Office