Both former and current Croatian prime ministers talked about this possible investment and now Slovenian media has released some new information.
Slovenian media reported on May 7, 2016, that the new technical support centre by tech giant IBM will be built in Croatia even though several other countries were in talks to attract this rather large investment. Apparently, Croatia offered much better conditions than Slovenia and Slovakia. Total Croatia News reported on this possible new investment back in February, and now there's more confirmation coming from our neighbouring country.
Slovenian media states that Maribor was offered as a possible location, hundreds of jobs were supposed to be created and the Slovenian prime minister Miro Cerar even spoke to the IBM management board during his US tour last year, however, it seems that was not enough.
IBM’s technical support centre is a project that aims to concentrate all the company’s tech services and to “shift” them from countries such as Germany and Italy towards Eastern Europe since there’s enough qualified staff for the tasks at hand, but the price of labour is lower. The main element in negotiations was the possibility of tax and other incentives. According to Delo and Večer, Slovenia did not offer an exciting enough incentives package so Croatia was selected for the project. Of course, both papers stated that, should IBM decide to open their centre in Croatia, they could have a problem finding enough qualified employees, since even the domestic IT companies have a problem in finding enough qualified staff.
IBM Croatia is yet to comment on these media reports. Current prime minister Orešković talked about the possibility back in February while the former prime minister Milanović visited IBM and other tech companies back in 2014. It will take a while for the centre to open, and that is if the media reports are true but at least it gives the current government an insight on how to attract big players. Incentives, incentives, incentives. Oh, and a lot less administration, of course.
