Business

ZAGREB, April 2, 2020 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on Wednesday unveiled additional measures to save jobs and help the economy amid the coronavirus crisis, which will be on the government's agenda on Thursday, including increasing the net minimum wage to HRK 4,000 (€725) and partly or fully exempting some businesses from taxes for April, May, and July. The measures are aimed at further alleviating the impact of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the worst global, European, and Croatian crisis in the last few years, Plenković said at a press conference after a session of the inner cabinet,…

ZAGREB, April 1, 2020 - Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli has said that last year's increase in tourism revenue of 11% is as expected as 2019 was a good year for tourism, and that the drop in revenue in the hospitality sector in the last month is as expected as well, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and closed tourist facilities. In a telephone interview with Hina on Wednesday, Cappelli said that he could not predict how long the current situation would last. Commenting on the latest information from the tax authority's fiscalisation system, which shows a major year-on-year drop in the…

ZAGREB, April 1, 2020 - The EU seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was stable in February, remaining at the lowest level since the EU's statistical office Eurostat started collecting data on a monthly basis, while in Croatia unemployment declined slightly. According to revised Eurostat data, the EU seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate, based on the definition recommended by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), was 6.5% in February 2020, stable compared to the previous month. The new lowest rate recorded in the EU since the start of Eurostat monthly unemployment series in January 2000 was registered in January 2020. The euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate…

ZAGREB, April 1, 2020 - Economy Minister Darko Horvat has signed 103 decisions on project financing based on the call for applications "Innovations in S3 Areas", to be supported by EU grants in the amount of HRK 341.7 million (€44.96 million), the Economy Ministry said on Wednesday. The purpose of the call was to encourage SMEs to commercialise their innovative products or services exclusively in line with identified priority thematic areas and inter-sector topics of the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3), the ministry said in a statement. Based on the call for applications, a total of 169 project proposals were submitted,…

April 1, 2020 - The second package of Government measures is very similar to the list of 10 demands the Initiative GLAS PODUZETNIKA sent ten days ago.  REACTION TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SECOND PACKAGE OF GOVERNMENT MEASURES “Glas Poduzetnika has, in less than two weeks, gathered around 100,000 micro, small and medium businesses, artisans and their employees. Looks like our voice was heard after all. We believe that the announced measure package will be confirmed by the Government and presented tomorrow. Two main points necessary for the survival of small and medium businesses from our demands are following, writing…

As Vedran Marjanovic/Novac writes on the 1st of April, 2020, although not as directly threatened by the spread of coronavirus as the tourism, hospitality and trade sectors are, the Croatian IT sector is already slowly feeling the effects of the coronavirus impact on the economy, with widespread concern about how long the crisis will last and what its consequences will be. ''Due to the significant percentage of drop in orders and cancellations of already ordered jobs, there's a challenge with the workforce, and the number of cancelled projects is worrying because the inflow of new revenues can no longer be…

ZAGREB, April 1, 2020 - If the epidemic is over relatively soon, the impact on the national economy will be weaker, however if all this lasts longer, Croatia's Gross Domestic Product could contract by 10%, says economist Danijel Nestić. Nestić, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Economics in Zagreb, told the RTL commercial broadcaster on Tuesday evening that one should hope that the government measures for mitigating the impact of the crisis could temporarily halt a rise in the number of the jobless. Businesses have stopped working, people are spending less and less, one in three workers is…

ZAGREB, April 1, 2020 - The fund for financing the decommissioning of Krško Nuclear Power Plant and the disposal of its radioactive waste stated on Tuesday that it had received the approval from the Energy and Environment Ministry for the use of former Čerkezovac barracks for establishment of a Radioactive Waste Disposal Centre. The former Čerkezovac barracks are at Trgovska Gora in the municipality of Dvor on the left bank of the River Una. The Zagreb-based Fund says in its press release that during the implementation of the project it would permanently cooperate with the local community and the general…

ZAGREB, April 1, 2020 - The coronavirus and recent strong earthquakes in Zagreb have led to a fall in rental prices in the capital of up to twenty percent while sales have slowed down drastically, the Večernji List daily reported on Wednesday. There are some prospective buyers however their contact is mostly over the phone and of an informative nature, one realtor told the daily. Before the outbreak of the epidemic, real estate prices in Zagreb and along the Adriatic coast were increasing by about 10% a year however that trend will temporarily be suspended. No one can be certain…

ZAGREB, March 31, 2020 - The Croatian National Bank (HNB) once again intervened on the foreign exchange market on Tuesday with the aim of maintaining exchange rate stability by selling banks just over €618 million, whereby HRK 4.7 billion was withdrawn from the system. The HNB sold €618.5 million at the middle exchange rate of HRK 7.608529. This is the fifth intervention and so far, the largest by the central bank in an effort to maintain exchange rate stability and ease the pressure of the depreciation of the domestic currency, the kuna. HNB first intervened on the exchange market on…