January the 18th, 2021 - The amount of Croatian companies actively seeking government aid in the form of numerous economic packages designed to retain jobs has doubled in the last two months alone. Despite a much better epidemiological picture in Croatia, with new cases of infection dropping dramatically, many Croatian companies are still struggling to stay afloat in what are very lean times indeed.
The winter months are usually more difficult for many, especially those who own businesses operating within the tourism sector, Croatia's strongest economic branch which simply cannot afford to be broken. However, with the coronavirus pandemic still raging, despite the advent of the vaccine, Croatian companies still need the government to step up.
As Marina Klepo/Novac writes, as government ministers continue to come up with and pass new economic measures to try to preserve jobs, extend those measures, expand coverage and devise new rules for applying for them, many Croatian employers continue to complain that their payouts are arriving late.
Those who are particularly dissatisfied are those operating in the heavily-hit hospitality and catering industry, who aren't currently allowed to even work, yet their bills keep on arriving. They have been pointing out that they haven't yet received their government grants for the month of November 2020.
Claims for the reimbursement of fixed operating costs are still being submitted, and the state should then reimburse those who apply successfully for that measure within 60 days. The Croatian Government institutions, on the other hand, claim that all grants for October have now been paid out, that possible arrears for November will be paid by the end of this week. They also claim that grants for December will be paid in January.
According to the Croatian Employment Service (CES), the number of Croatian companies seeking support back in October and November increased significantly compared to what the situation looked like during the summer months, in fact, it has more than doubled.
However, the real jump will only be shown by the data for December 2020 and January 2021. Back in October last year, 25,670 Croatian companies sought state support, about ten thousand more than in September, in November that number reached almost 32 thousand, and a total of 120,273 people were employed. A record number of Croatian companies in need of state assistance was seen way back in April, with as many as 100,864 seeking it, with a total of 594,444 employees.
By the end of November, a massive 7.6 billion kuna had been paid out to Croatian companies in the form of government grants. While the negative impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has hit business owners working in tourism and hospitality the hardest, the latest Fina analysis shows that there are also sectors that are actually coping well with this crisis.
With a minimal risk of "default status", 1251 Croatian companies continue to successfully operate, with 1085 of them not applying for government assistance measures even once.
The assessment of their credit rating is calculated on the basis of submitted annual financial reports, data on the state of any blockages placed on them by the state and the status of bankruptcy, pre-bankruptcy and liquidation.
In the group of the most stable Croatian companies, most of them, more precisely 263 of them, are those who operate in the manufacturing industry, a sector that has been exposed to great market pressures for years now. This sector is followed by trade with 259 Croatian companies, enterprises working in professional, scientific and technical activities (133), then construction (87), water supply and wastewater disposal (63), and transport and storage (58).
When it comes to the size of a company, the analysis shows that the group of the most stable enterprises includes 715 medium-sized Croatian companies, 183 large ones, 181 micro-enterprises and six who are technically defined as small.
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