Tourism Professionals from Lika-Senj and Karlovac Counties Optimistic about 2021
November 13, 2020 – Tourism professionals from Lika-Senj and Karlovac counties expressed optimism about next year in their area, but also in Croatia as a whole.
As Hina reports, the panel "What about (corona) tourism in 2021?" was held on Thursday, November 12 2020 as part of the 6th regional forum of family accommodation in Karlovac, which was organized with partners by the Family Tourism Community Section for the Lika-Karlovac region at the chambers of Karlovac and Otočac.
Panelists presented their views on the next tourist year and this year's experiences, which they described as "a good lesson from which much could be learned and prepared for the future."
The owner of the hotel and winery Boškinac from Novalja, Boris Šuljić, rated this year as one of the most challenging in tourism, but also for him as an entrepreneur. However, he added that at the beginning of the spring closing, they managed to keep all employees and use the time to work on the company's progress.
"That's why we had a very successful season this year, but as trends change and regardless of corona, we still have to constantly adjust. I am optimistic about 2021 and I believe that flights, maritime traffic, and car tourism in the full profile will be established to a greater extent," said Suljic.
He also believes that everyone in tourism should be well prepared for next year, and that "the difficult experience from this year should be a guide". He also said that "the most important thing in tourism is to deliver high quality".
"We are already working hard on new dishes and we believe in the classic continuation of our business and a return to the 'old normal'," said Šuljić.
Krešo Rogoz, director of the Croatia Open Land DMC company from Karlovac, is also optimistic for next year, saying that after stopping all plans, they used this year to search for new resources, but also to prepare a different, more individual tourism for smaller groups.
"It's also interesting that we raised prices and thus got smaller groups that accumulated more money. The key is to team up, collect additional content and excellence, and we all hope for a normal spring and base our plans on car tourists," said Rogoz, who believes that it is time to jointly devise how to brand destinations to be even more recognizable in the tourist markets.
The director of the Homeland War Museum in Karlovac, Hrvojka Božić, notes that this year they used digital channels a lot to bring back visitors, which they succeeded in doing, and in the summer months they had about 80 percent of last year's attendance.
They are optimistic about 2021, believing in the power of community collaboration and networking of stakeholders within the destination, as well as in the development of content tailored to individual visitors and smaller groups.
Although they had only 25 percent of last year's overnight stays this year, Rakovica Deputy Mayor Mihovil Bićanić also hopes for a speedy recovery.
"We believe in stabilization in 2021, in which we should additionally focus on domestic tourists and on raising awareness about the offer of continental tourism, in which there is still a lot of room for additional content and strengthening quality," concluded Bićanić.
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After Smart Parking, Split Welcomes E-ticketing for Public Transport
November 13, 2020 - After receiving smart parking, Split welcomes e-ticketing for public transport and thus continues their smart city journey.
Gradonačelnik.hr writes that in accordance with world trends, in recent years, Croatia has been investing more and more in the development of smart city concepts and smart solutions that use modern technologies and digital solutions to raise the quality of life in cities. Given the increasing traffic congestion that has become a primary problem in the daily life of large cities, one of the key aspects of smart city development is certainly ‘Smart Mobility’ which is becoming a decisive factor in the quality and competitiveness of cities. The key goal is to increase the quality - reduce congestion, provide precise and accurate timetables, introduce a simple and efficient toll system, increase the number of public transport users to relieve city roads, and, ultimately, reduce environmental pollution.
After the transformation of public transport in many European cities, such as Prague, Belgrade and Brno, where contactless payment solutions for public transport have already been implemented, using the passenger's bank or credit card, smartphone or watch as a means of payment, Mastercard wants to be a partner to both Croatian cities and public carriers.
Therefore, they conducted a study on public transport in Croatia, which showed that in Croatian society there is a great demand for public transport services and a widespread culture of card payments, which are key prerequisites for further digital improvement of public transport services. The survey conducted as part of the study showed that citizens are generally satisfied with public transport in large Croatian cities, but see opportunities for improvement, such as reducing traffic jams, more reliable timetables, ease of use of services, and ticket purchase models.
By implementing contactless payment solutions in public transport, Mastercard can help key stakeholders develop a new generation of public transport, aimed at more satisfied end-users, more efficient operation of public transport companies, and environmental protection.
After being the first in Croatia to launch a smart parking project that covered over 1,300 parking spaces in the city with sensors and introduced an application that makes it easier for drivers to find free parking spaces, and then introduced a special smart parking system for people with disabilities in the city, Split is moving forward with the development of smart solutions that raise the quality of city traffic.
The city has provided over 12 million non-refundable EU kuna for the strategic project "Implementation of the e-ticketing system in Promet d.o.o. through the ITU mechanism" worth over 25.4 million kuna. The key goal of the project is to improve the quality of public transport by automating the process of charging for tickets and informing passengers to, ultimately, increase the number of passengers in public transport.
The process of selecting the most economically advantageous bidder within the public procurement procedure of the e-ticketing system by Promet d.o.o. is currently underway, and the system should come to life in the middle of next year, if everything goes according to plan.
"In addition to the support for the existing standard technologies of the paper card system, contactless cards, the system will also provide the possibility of using modern ticket technologies, via mobile phones, as well as the possibility of paying for the ride with bank cards on the vehicle. This will simplify and make it easier for passengers to buy tickets, and at the same time speed up the change of passengers at bus stops," says Ante Ivandić, head of the service for development projects and informatics at Promet.
At major bus stops, there are plans to install five machines to purchase paper tickets and contactless value cards, top-up, and extend the validity of tickets. In this way, passengers will be able to purchase and renew travel tickets while waiting for the bus, so that when entering the bus, they independently validate travel tickets, without the participation of the driver.
Introducing e-ticketing will provide additional opportunities for buying tickets, thanks to a mobile application to purchase tickets online, and a webshop platform for buying tickets online. In this way, all users, such as pupils, students, pensioners and citizens, would have the opportunity to extend the value of their tickets without physically coming to Promet's locations and wasting time unnecessarily.
"Also, to efficiently monitor the performance of individual lines, and to optimize the traffic offer, through the system we will get information about the actual number of passengers who entered or exited at each station, i.e., we will have data on the load of the vehicle per line, and accordingly make corrections and optimizations in the timetable. On the other hand, passengers and users will be provided with much more information through this system compared to the situation so far. It will be possible to better monitor the personal costs of transportation, passengers will have accurate information about bus arrivals, as well as assistance in selecting lines for a particular route, for the purposes of travel planning. The system will also make it easier for people with disabilities to find their way around, because on buses, an announcement (voice and visual) of the arrival at a particular bus stop will be introduced, and at important bus stops a voice announcement of the arrival will be established through information displays.
By introducing this system, we will modernize and improve the quality of the public passenger transport service in the area where we provide the transport service," Ivandić points out.
E-ticketing is designed as an integral part of the future joint system with other utility systems in the City of Split such as parking fees, city services, defined interfaces to other services, and will be integrated with SmartCity Split platform.
The introduction of this system should solve a number of problems in Split's public transport that negatively affect the quality of service and thus the satisfaction of citizens, from the inability to implement precise timetables, inability to monitor vehicles in real-time, congestion at certain stops, poor ticket collection, to the non-transparent distribution of costs and revenues among stakeholders. All this causes dissatisfaction with public transport users due to constant waiting, crowds, problems with buying tickets, but also unavailable information.
Thus, the City of Split, as the host city of the Urban Agglomeration of Split and other 12 cities and municipalities that are part of the Urban Agglomeration of Split, unanimously decided to direct part of the ITU mechanism funds intended for the Urban Agglomeration of Split to Promet d.o.o. Therefore, 42 million kuna of ITU grants were provided, namely 30 million kuna for the purchase of 18 new buses that were delivered in July this year, as well as 12 million kuna for the implementation of the e-ticketing system.
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Croatia Reports 3,056 New COVID-19 Cases, Record 43 Deaths
ZAGREB, Nov 13, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours, Croatia has registered 3,059 new cases of the coronavirus infection and 43 related deaths, the national COVID-19 response team said on Friday.
The number of active cases now stands at 16,746, there are 1,620 COVID patients in hospitals, and 179 of them are on ventilators.
Since February 25, when Croatia registered its first coronavirus infection, a total of 78,978 people have contracted the novel coronavirus, 968 of them have died and 61,264 have recovered, including 2,615 in the last 24 hours.
There are currently 38,585 people in self-isolation.
To date, 601,743 people have been tested for coronavirus, including 9,417 in the last 24 hours.
The COVID-19 response team has introduced additional epidemiological restrictions for several communities in Split-Dalmatia County.
PM: Again More Than 3,000 New Infections, Compliance with Restrictions Necessary
ZAGREB, November 13, 2020 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Friday that Croatia would today again have more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases, appealing to citizens to comply with epidemiological measures so as to avoid the introduction of more restrictions and noting that the situation is currently under control.
"The current situation is definitely the most difficult since the onset of the epidemic and we all must behave in such a way to help reduce those high numbers as soon as possible," Plenkovic said at a government session.
He said that the measures adopted two weeks ago had significantly slowed down the spreading of the epidemic and that the situation in Croatia was not as bad as in some other countries but that it was serious.
In five counties epidemiological measures are in force that are stricter than those at the national level.
"If we want to avoid stricter measures, personal responsibility is crucial. We believe this can be achieved with joint effort, with measures currently in force and with responsible behavior," he said, calling for physical distancing, wearing of masks and social distancing, with less contact with friends and relatives and less unnecessary contact.
Sufficient hospital capacity, sufficient number of beds, ventilators
The situation is currently under control even though the number of hospitalised patients is growing, which is due to an increase in the number of infections of about ten days ago, but the increase has been slowing down. The health system is under strain but it is not on the verge of collapse, Plenkovic said.
He noted that in Zagreb's KB Dubrava hospital alone, there were more than 500 available beds.
The hospital has been converted into a COVID hospital.
"Even though tests cannot discover all new cases, the slowing down of the number of new hospitalisations confirms that the situation with the epidemic is not getting out of control in relation to the measures in force and the capacity of the health system," he said.
Court Finds Sanader, Barisic and Pavosevic Guilty, HDZ Responsible
ZAGREB, November 13, 2020 - Former prime minister and former HDZ party leader Ivo Sanader was found guilty on Friday pending appeal and sentenced to eight years in prison for siphoning money from state-owned companies and institutions in the Fimi Media case.
Also convicted in a retrial before Zagreb County Court were former HDZ treasurer Mladen Barisic and accountant Branka Pavosevic while the party, into whose slush fund some of the siphoned money had allegedly ended up, was found "responsible".
Details of the case as well as the sentences of all the indictees will be known after the trial chamber reads out and explains the verdict.
Neither Sanader nor his co-defendants on Friday attended the reading of the verdict in the case in which they were charged with siphoning around HRK 70 million (€9.3 million) from state-owned companies and institutions through the Fimi Media marketing agency. The ten-year case has become a byword for political corruption in Croatia.
Sanader was not present because he is undergoing physical rehabilitation in a spa following surgery and due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The retrial in the case started in 2016, a year after the Supreme Court quashed a sentencing verdict handed down in 2013 by Judge Ivana Krsul.
While USKOK anti-corruption investigators believe that they have proven the responsibility of Sanader, his former party and his co-defendants for corruption also in the retrial, their defence claims there is no evidence of their guilt.
The HDZ's lawyers said the party should be held accountable for a misdemeanor, while Sanader's defence reiterated that the incrimination was based solely on the "contradictory, inconsistent and illogical" testimony of former HDZ treasurer Barisic.
Besides Sanader, Barisic, Pavosevic and the HDZ, also indicted in this case was former government and HDZ spokesman Ratko Macek. Another defendant, Fimi Media owner Nevenka Jurak, died during the retrial.
In the first trial, Sanader was sentenced to nine years and ordered to return over HRK 15 million in illegal gains, while the HDZ was ordered to return more than HRK 24 million and fined HRK 5 million.
In the first trial, Barisic, Pavosevic and Jurak were given milder prison sentences and ordered to return the money. Unlike then, in the retrial they pleaded not guilty. Macek and Sanader were the only ones denying the charges from the start. In the first trial, Macek was given a suspended sentence.
Sanader has been in prison since 2019, serving a sentence in the Planinska corruption case. In the meantime, he has been sentenced pending appeal for taking a bribe from the Hungarian energy group MOL and, in 2018, for taking a kickback from the Austrian Hypo bank. He has been acquitted pending appeal for the sale of electricity from the HEP provider at cheaper prices.
Vesela Motika - Urban Indoor Eco Farm on Tresnjevka
November 14, 2020 - What happens when you give three agronomists and one Excel guy a space of 90 square meters? Believe it or not – a completely eco-based urban indoor farm, Vesela Motika.
Not so long ago, Sergej Lugovic and his colleague Bojan Krnjic started the journey of Urban Farm Solutions. At that time Sergej was a professor at Polytechnic of Zagreb and he often worked with his students on project-based things. They wanted a ready-made growing system to work together on automation, electronics, and software but realized there isn't any plug and play system for that to buy in Croatia.
As time passed, Sergej and Bojan worked on agriculture systems: on the one hand, they have the software and technological solutions. On the other hand, they have the primary cultivation on their farm. All of that is hidden at the indoor farm on Tresnjevka, which has a long tradition of independent food production in Zagreb; there was a dairy, soy factory, and now Vesela Motika (Happy Hoe).
© Vesela Motika
Systems Kostya and Home Garden
They work with primary indoor cultivation of plant crops, equipment development, and complete solutions that are created according to clients' wishes. System Kostya is industrial-based for conventional agriculture, and it is a vertical system, while Home Garden is more if you want a have plants in your house or office. Except that it has a therapeutic feature - Sergej can calculate what you eat, how much you eat, how much you spend on food, so that you can benefit from that aspect, as well.
“Our thing is hyper-local; we don't need equipment from I don't know where because we have the competencies to make them in Croatia. If we could build have the business towers around the world, one of the best guns in the world, the fastest electric car, the best athletes, where are we stuck in other things?”
If you want to grow 2000 seedlings (whose price at the Tresnjevka market is 4 HRK), you need a space of 1.2 meters by 0,6 meters and six floors with shelves for seedlings. This is the Kostya system used in professional agriculture.
Eco seeds are procured from the company Lokvine (near Zagreb). Besides, their entire production is eco: from top nutrients for plants, protection, and substrates to top lighting.
© Vesela Motika
The biggest problem in agriculture - financial and information literacy
Talking to farmers, Sergei realized that they do not know how to calculate the price difference because they do not record costs, do not manage stocks, and do not count their time.
“Because of all this, overkill happens, burning outs, product quality drops, or they start behaving opportunistically and then reselling. Then you are the same thing you are fighting against,” says Sergej, who comes from the field of business analytics. He used to run the Big Data Lab for five years, was among the first 4 employees at SAP Croatia, and had an Internet video company in 2005 (yes, before YouTube).
“If you buy 10kg of tomatoes and sell them, that is around 70 HRK. If you make salsa from those 10 kgs, you might get 120 HRK. But if you bring a person to the farm, to pick a tomato himself, teach him how to make that salsa and take it home, give him accommodation on the farm, you get, for the same 10 kg of tomatoes, 350 HRK (including an overnight stay, meal, etc.),” says Sergej.
© Vesela Motika
YouTube for food
As an active member of the underground electronic music scene and being a DJ for 20 years, Sergej has run nightclubs and organized over 1,000 events. He realized that this underground independent scene culture could be applied to independent food culture. That’s why he prefers to call it independent rather than craft.
Sergej’s is finishing his Ph.D. in information behavior in which he quantified patterns of behavior of people searching for music in the domain of machine learning. The first paper was published in 2005 about what other industries can learn from the music industry. “Because we went from records to making all the music free. Then I asked a hypothetical question, what would YouTube for food look like?”
Just as we have free music on YouTube, so we could have free food. It seemed impossible at first, but after research, he realized that 50% of food is thrown away. “If they had a good information system, everyone would have free food,” Sergej concludes.
He made a comparison and said that Google is worth a trillion, now; let's imagine someone investing a trillion in an information system to give food to those who don’t have from those who have a surplus. But of course, he is aware that legislation would try to prevent this. “We worked on an information system for the Red Cross store in Zagreb, which distributes food free of charge, and they were acquainted with the strict legal regulations.”
Sergej believes that these ways can always be regulated - if someone wants to give his surplus, he sees no obstacle for others to accept it.
© Vesela Motika
Contra concept - big no to “from the field to the table”
If there are one table and four suppliers trying to be as close to that table as possible, when a customer decides what to buy, he will only take 1 and 3 stays where? But if we look from the “from table to farm” aspect, Sergej, as an information scientist, follows the information: your refrigerator and your desk know how much food you need. If that data could be captured, we can have a lot less food waste, a much clearer information picture of what’s going on. Another premise is that food must be produced as close as possible to where it is consumed because too much money is spent on distribution, cold chains, etc. The impact is not only about eating quality, not polluting the Earth with transport, but also having a therapeutic effect.
His colleague Bojan grew a lot of things near Popovaca. They concluded that the energy they spend on artificial lighting in Zagreb on the indoor farm is equal to when Bojan goes to Popovaca 7 and a half times a month. “And we can grow one ton in Zagreb, which is 12 tons a year,” says Sergej.
Cognition is a process, don't hurry it
Sergej doesn't worry if something doesn't happen tomorrow; he realizes that everything will come on its own. He teaches his students that if they plant a salad, they will eat it in 30 days. If they plant an olive, they will eat it in 7 years, but they will eat it for 700 years. “I wrote something in my MBA in 1999 that I am doing today. The conclusion was whether the refrigerator would become a competitor to Tesco because the refrigerator has information on how much you eat,” says Sergej.
They are working on some projects that are still in the early stage of development but are already talking to the people working on the buildings' projects. If a building, a socio-technological system, is built together with a biosystem, there can be a farm in the basement. The lamps' heat goes up, heats the building, and the people who live in that building have fresh vegetables on hand. Besides, each building would have one agronomist.
Furthermore, they created an app that has four functions: it is a multivendor (combines transit warehouse for multiple suppliers, logistics, route planning), transaction system (immediately issues invoices, delivery notes - when you click “buy,” 12 documents are created automatically), finance management and has a farm and inventory self-management module. They have developed very demanding software that requires a larger volume of sales to make it cost-effective. “Friend, who runs a farm and make one of the best cheese in Croatia, told me that I have a Jaguar in the garage; there will come a time when I will park it in front.”
As much as the corona crisis gave them time to build an even stronger story, it still brought them to their knees in some things. “And that's okay. Because looking at physics, everything that sinks has a repressive force, as well,” concludes Sergej.
© Vesela Motika
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Croatian Infobip: We're Only Just Beginning, Exciting Times Ahead
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes on the 12th of November, 2020, the Croatian Infobip, the first domestic "unicorn" with a market value of more than a billion US dollars, is, as we previously reported, entering the American market - they're buying their subsidiary OpenMarket, a platform for sending SMS messages, from the American company Amdocs, for a price of almost 300 million US dollars.
A sales contract with the owner of OpenMarket has now been signed, and the transaction between the Croatian Infobip and OpenMarket, which will be concluded following its approval by US regulators, will enable more than 14 billion user interactions per month through a number of communication channels across more than 190 countries.
''Infobip and OpenMarket together can boast of more than 10,000 business users, which includes many of the world's most prominent companies. We'll be able to better meet the needs of our customers in every part of the world with the best direct connectivity, with more than 650 telecom operators, a superior, shared portfolio of cloud communications solutions and an SaaS offer,'' explained Silvio Kutic, the CEO of the Croatian Infobip, adding that they have an exciting period ahead of them and that this is just the beginning.
Jonathan Morgan, the director of OpenMarket, feels the same way. Back during this summer, the Croatian Infobip raised more than 200 million US dollars in the first round of funding from the investment fund One Equity Partners. Then, they announced their expansion in the USA with the help of the cash from that fund, with the announcement of potential takeovers, and it seems that the current focus is on acquisitions. The trio from Vodnjan - Roberto and Silvio Kutic, as well as Izabel Jelenic - directed precisely that 200 million US dollars towards gaining the largest American clients, which they've now been able to confirm.
The Seattle-based OpenMarket fits into the Croatian Infobip’s portfolio because their main product is cloud-based mobile messaging, which includes sending SMS, MMS, RCS and short codes, local numbers and free messaging. The company has about 300 employees, with revenues of about 200 million US dollars, and their services are used by more than 400 companies. Today, Infobip has more than 65 offices worldwide and more than 2,700 employees. They grossed 602 million US dollars last year and have grown an average of 48 percent a year for the past decade, with more than 300,000 business clients including WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, Costco, Virgin Megastore, Strava, Uber, Unilever, Zendesk and Burger King.
They started back in 2006 as a small startup in Vodnjan in Istria, which gradually built up its own global network. Today, they provide proprietary technology that can reach more than seven billion devices in more than 190 countries, and are directly connected to more than 600 telecom operators worldwide.
In just seven years, they have grown from zero kuna to a worth of 100 million US dollars and now they are among the ten fastest growing B2B SaaS companies in the whole world.
In October, the Infobip Management Board received two strong names - Gregor Potocar, who was appointed Vice President for Revenue, while Aleksandar Raic was appointed Vice President for Transformation and Human Resources. Then, Potocar announced that the Croatian Infobip was preparing for the upcoming period of enormous growth of the company, which will be marked by new business segments and entry into new markets.
"Infobip is facing an exciting period in which we expect a large increase in the number of people within the company through acquisitions and new employments, further structuring, as well as the continuation of the digitalisation process at the company level," Raic announced at the time.
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Can Croatian Economy Manage with Current Speed of Coronavirus Spread?
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 12th of November, 2020, more than 12,000 Croatian employers, employing around 60,000 workers, have so far applied for the Croatian Government's economic measures to preserve jobs, and those numbers are expected to grow, Labour Minister Josip Aladrovic said recently. Just how long can the Croatian economy survive with this ''tempo'' of coronavirus spread?
The Croatian Employment Service (CES) has so far received requests for the use of money from the government's package of measures, which is in force until the end of the year for, as stated, more than 60,000 workers and 12,000 employers, Aladrovic said after a cabinet session.
These figures refer to grants for the month of October, which will continue being received until the 25th of November. He added that he "expects an influx of requests according to the planned figures" and announced the probable continuation of aid measures until after the new year.
However, given the concerning epidemiological situation regarding the speed of coronavirus spread across the country, he expects that the number of beneficiaries of government measures will be slightly higher than expected and planned, but points out that enough money has been provided in the state budget revision and that it is estimated that a certain amount should be provided in next year's budget on top of that.
"In this way, the government will help employers and employees by the end of the year, and most likely after that, in order to preserve jobs," Aladrovic said.
"As things currently stand, we're quite convinced that next year we'll have to still have certain measures in place in order to protect employment and jobs," he added. He also noted that the measures of the government from March "preserved the labour market" and he expects that it will be the same in the future.
Asked how long Croatia can withstand this rate of coronavirus spread economically, Minister Josip Aladrovic answered that it can certainly endure the situation until the end of this year, and into the beginning of next year too.
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Krunoslav Capak: Croatia to be Among First to Begin Vaccination
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 12th of November, 2020, the director of the Croatian Institute for Public Health, Krunoslav Capak, recently commented for U mrezi prvog on when the first vaccinations against the new coronavirus in Croatia would begin. Four million and 600 thousand doses of vaccine are set to arrive in the country. The most optimistic forecast is that the first doses of the brand new will arrive in December.
"We've got the first draft plan, but we still don't know when the vaccines will come. Croatia is being provided with a vaccine from three suppliers, and we'll continue on with other suppliers. For now, we will have enough for more than 50 percent of the population. We don't know which will be the first vaccine to be registered, the most likely one will be the one from Oxford's Astra Zenica. When they'll be ready - we don't know yet, but according to what we heard from them yesterday, it should be soon. That moment is now approaching,'' Krunoslav Capak assured.
He added that once the side effects are known, further elements for the plan will be known in order to best handle the next hurdle in the battle against the novel coronavirus - SARS-CoV-2.
"Pfizer's vaccine could be the first in the world. We will start vaccinating early, we will be among the first in the world to do so,'' added Krunoslav Capak.
''Those who will administer the coronavirus vaccinations will be general practitioners, pediatricians and staff at public health institutes. Rapid vaccination teams may also be organised for special sections of the population. We will first vaccinate the most vulnerable groups, older people, and people with commodities. It's very important to include the strategically important population - healthcare workers, workers in nursing homes and possibly the police and the army. But we'll know more about that only when we know how many vaccines we're going to get,'' said the first man of the Croatian Institute of Public Health, adding that they don't even know how long the vaccine will be valid for, ie how much the vaccine will be worth, as some vaccines are valid for a mere six months.
The vaccine against the novel coronavirus will be voluntary and free for strategic and vulnerable groups of people.
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Vehicle Modernisation Just One Step for Croatian Transport Overhaul
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes on the 12th of November, 2020, HZ Cargo, a technologically backward state-owned company, is continuing its restructuring under a new management led by director Dragan Marcinko. Is this a brand new start for Croatian transport?
After being a crisis manager for several companies, Marcinko accepted a new challenge to save this Croatian transport company, which is why he is embarking on a programme to modernise the company's entire fleet. They took over the Siemens Vectron X4 A17 electric locomotive from the German leasing company ELL Germany GmbH at a price that can't be revealed or found out due to a contractual obligation of the other party, and with the announcement that two more electric locomotives with a minimum power of 5.6 MW are planned for the year 2021.
They should arrive at the beginning of the year, when the initial activities of modernisation of the HZ Cargo fleet would be completed. This is one of the main preconditions for the implementation of a successful restructuring of the company and indeed Croatian transport, in full accordance with the goals approved by the EC in order to stabilise and maintain business, on the obviously longer path that awaits them to find a strategic partner.
In preparation for this, Marcinko's management is already working as part of the proposed set of measures - securing new contracts for the transport of goods, which aim to ensure the stabilisation of the company by finding a quality partner that would continue to operate in a liberalised market. Last year, they transported only about 47.5 percent of the annual amount of transported cargo. Next year, Marcinko intends to raise that share to 60 percent, which would allegedly lead to the cessation of ''loss-making'' business.
The new electric locomotive, which will meet all modern traction needs and represent in some way an overhaul of the lagging Croatian transport offer, offers technical flexibility and long-term economic predictability and is the first concrete step towards "the necessary turn in the company's way of doing business and adapting to the conditions of the growing railway market".
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