Free Advice on Finances

Free Advice on Finances

From Prague Post reports

Germany will open a center offering free economic advice in Prague as part of a chain of such centers in Central and Eastern Europe.

The aim of the center, which will be attached to the German embassy, is to help Czechoslovakia avoid poor advice from so-called experts flooding in from the West.

'There have been complaints from some quarters, ... they [Czechoslovak citizens] feel they have been pounced on by market-seeking advisers and they have no idea how they should deal with this invasion,' said Lorenz Schomerus, a senior official at Germany's Ministry of the Economy.

'There is no denying that this giant market for advice which is emerging had unleashed a certain 'gold-digging' mentality,' Schomerus said.

Germany will spend DM700 million ($475 million) on an advice-and-aid program in 1992 and 1993 and set up centers in 11 of the more advanced East European countries. Special programs have been designated for areas needing extra help, including Romania, Albania, the former Yugoslav states, and the Asian republics of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The Prague advice center, like the others, will be run by the Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau, the state-owned lending firm set up after World War II to help rebuild western Germany.

Each center will have two or three advisors and support staff, with further experts on call as required.

Although German industry has been the largest investor so far in Czechoslovakia, this is the first government-sponsored program of development aid. The center joins an already extensive list of schemes designed to help Czechoslovakia and other East European states, including the US Bush fund and the British Know-How Fund.

Germany's entry to the market for free advice, however, follows increasing complaints by Czechoslovakia's business people that Western 'experts' are not all they seem.

'We do not think much of mobile advisors with impressive-sounding [university] titles flying in now and then to hand over blueprints and then disappearing again,' Schomerus said.