BRATISLAVA, October 8, (WEBNOVINY) — The News Agency of the Slovak Republic, TASR, needs to be reformed, as this ensues from the government’s intentions for the culture department. According to Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer, the government’s effort will be to adjust the functioning of the news agency in such a way that question marks no longer arise about its business activities, because if „it charges a fee for its services also in relation to the government sector or the public administration, then the question is legitimate of to what extent should the government be subsidizing such an entity. But these are all issues to be addressed within a conceptual change, transformation of the News Agency of the Slovak Republic,“ Krajcer said in an interview with SITA news agency.
„It is true that TASR remains in a certain not entirely clear position. On the one hand, there are government subsidies, on the other hand, there are payments from state institutions for services that TASR provides,“ the minister said. Transformation of TASR should remove these ambiguities. For Krajcer this is „one of the conceptual tasks“ and he wants to deal with it intensively so that TASR can be transformed next year.
On the other hand, Krajcer pointed out that „at this point TASR performs tasks that we can hardly be expected from a commercial news agency.“ The minister said it must be acknowledged that the new management of TASR in recent years took a number of rationalization measures to streamline its functioning. „Director General [Jaroslav Reznik — editor’s note] presented me a concept according to which in 2014 it would no longer be necessary to subsidize the agency from the state budget. I appreciate this rationalization,“ Krajcer told SITA.
After the change of the law from January 1, 2009, the legal status of TASR changed from a partly budget subsidized organization within the cultural department to a public service organization, which makes available a part of its products to the public free-of-charge for non-commercial purposes, but it continues to sell it news agency products. In addition to revenue from the sale of its news services, another source of revenue is a contribution from the state under a contract for the provision of public services between the Ministry of Culture and TASR. For the first six months of this year, TASR received EUR 957,994 based on a contract for the provision of public services.
SITA