We support the Southern Gas Corridor

Caspian Energy (CE): Mr. Mládek, could you please tell about the plans for encouraging industrial production in the Czech Republic in 2017? Which factors are supportive and which ones hinder you in this regard?

Jan Mládek, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic: As far as promotion of industry is concerned, first of all, I would say that industry is crucial in the Czech Republic because it accounts for the one-third of GDP, mainly the processing industry.

With regard to stimulating and supporting the manufacture, the most important thing we are dealing with is to tackle challenges of the modern world, and within industry it means Industry 4.0. We are committed to boosting a rollout of the fourth industrial revolution, which is closer and closer and which suggests a wider use of Internet resources, digitization, robotization, and how to take these new challenges is what we are dealing with. With regard to specific action, currently we are discussing what a new approach to foreign investment will be like because we were trying to get as much investment as possible and in some sense we have reached a logical conclusion because last year the Czech Republic became a country with the lowest unemployment rates. But at the same time we do not have enough manpower and this is what we are going to discuss and tackle this year. We will not support all kinds of investments, but encourage high value-added investment projects.