Impact of Waste Deposition Fees on Enterprises in the Czech Republic

This article presents the partial results of the most extensive analysis focused at environmental fees ever made in the Czech Republic performed by Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem in collaboration with the Czech Statistical Office. The current paper is focused at describing the impact of both current and newly proposed waste deposition fee rates on the set of enterprise economic performance indicators. The first part of the paper provides a description of history as well as the current situation in the field of waste deposition fees in the country. The second part of the paper shortly describes the applied methodology of data collection and analysis. Such indicators as a) share of waste deposition fee in total revenues of an enterprise; b) share of waste deposition fee in consumption from operation; c) share of waste deposition fee in value added were calculated. The analysis consisted of the two consequent steps. The first was focused at quantifying the share of fees in selected economic indicators of enterprises in the year 2006. The second step consisted in quantification of the potential impact of the fee rates newly proposed by the Ministry of the Environment on economic agents in 2010 given an assumption that neither productivity nor economic performance of the companies would change. The final part of the paper presents the general conclusions about the stimulative potential of current and updated fees used as economic tools of environmental policy.