Miroslav Kalousek named “Best Finance Minister”

The Czech Republic’s Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek has been named as the “Finance Minister of the Year 2008.” The award comes from the Washington-based magazine Emerging Markets and specifically covers the areas of post-communist Europe, Turkey and post-Soviet states including those in Asia. Mr Kalousek received the award in person on Friday, while in the US attending a World Bank summit of world finance ministers convened to address the ongoing global financial crisis. Mr Kalousek has been criticised at home in some quarters for an excessively lax approach the financial crisis, stoked by recent comments that the Czech Republic was an “oasis” of calm in the financial and economic spheres.