Czech PM says euro date to wait till after reforms

...new target date for euro adoption, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said on Wednesday.

The European Union member country has yet to set a new plan for joining the bloc's single currency zone after abandoning an earlier 2010 target date because of a rise in the fiscal deficit above the EU's ceiling of 3 percent of gross domestic product.

The government and the central bank have been expected to review the country's euro strategy and decide whether or not to set a new target date by the summer.

The Finance Ministry has suggested 2012 as a new date, but a number of other government officials prefer to have no date to give the country more time for economic convergence with richer countries western Europe.

"We will undoubtedly wait with any specific date until after the relevant reforms have been approved," said Topolanek.

"Without the reforms being approved, any such discussion is pointless," he told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting which approved a plan dealing with technical issues needed to prepare for introducing the euro.

Topolanek's right-of-centre government wants to boost state coffers with a rise in sales tax, offset by a cut in income taxes, and to curb an increasingly costly welfare state in the biggest public finance overhaul in more than a decade.

It aims to reverse a widening of the fiscal deficit and reduce it towards 3 percent of GDP in 2008 from 4 percent in 2007, but it remained uncertain whether the government can push its proposal through parliament where it holds half the seats.