ZAGREB, March 15 (Hina) - Following the announcement by the opposition Živi Zid party that it would file a criminal complaint against the owner of the Brodosplit shipyard, Tomislav Debeljak, the shipyard's management, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and his predecessors Tihomir Orešković and Zoran Milanović, and former Economy Minister Ivan Vrdoljak for financial wrongdoing at the Split-based shipyard, the ruling HDZ and the strongest opposition party SDP denied their responsibility for the current problems at Brodosplit, accusing each other of financial machinations.
The chairman of the HDZ parliamentary group, Branko Bačić, said that criminal complaints were Živi Zid's "modus operandi", adding that what people thought of them was best shown by a fall in their approval ratings. He said that the government of Prime Minister Plenković cared about the shipbuilding industry, especially about the Uljanik Group, but had to deal with problems of the previous SDP government.
"When (the SDP-led government) said in 2012 and 2013 that the five billion kuna invested was the last the government was giving and that there would be milk and honey after that, they obviously were not telling the truth. Already by the end of 2015, at the end of the SDP's term, a guarantee was issued to Uljanik which was not spent on what it was issued for, so that last year we had to allocate 916 million kuna so that workers could receive their wages. That was done by this government to give the management enough time to agree a restructuring plan and find a strategic partner, but it turned out that they did not find a partner and the plan was made sloppily," Bačić said.
Branko Grčić, an SDP MP and former deputy prime minister in the Zoran Milanović government, described Živi Zid's move as "the initiative of a group of people who never even ran a local council, which means that they never took care of thousands of people who worked or who work in the shipbuilding sector."
"They don't understand the significance of the shipbuilding industry for the Croatian economy and state. Shipbuilding accounts for about 15 percent of exports and that is reason enough to fight for this industry," Grčić said.
Grčić said that contrary to their statements, the present and previous HDZ governments had issued about 360 million euro in guarantees to Uljanik and a further 45 million dollars to the Uljanik shipping company, but nothing of that "was built into the ships". "After a while they faced a crisis at Uljanik, whereas what we did produced certain results and was visible in the delivery of newly-built ships."
More news about the Croatian shipbuilding industry can be found in the Business section.
