Business

ZAGREB, March 12, 2020 - The Croatian state-run HŽ Infrastruktura company and the Turkish Cengiz Insaat Sanayi ve Ticaret on Thursday signed a HRK 2.42 billion contract on the reconstruction and upgrade of a 42.6-kilometre-long railway from Križevci via Koprivnica to the Croatian border with Hungary. The project, which is co-financed with funds from the European Union's Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), is expected to last 42 months. The works are due to start in April and end in October 2023. The project envisages upgrading the route to a double-track railway, with nine modernised rail stations, two viaducts, 21 railway overpasses…

ZAGREB, March 12, 2020 - The Opatija Declaration on guidelines for the development of EU maritime policy - environment protection, digitisation, human resources, security and competitiveness - was adopted on Wednesday at an informal meeting of the Union's transport ministers in that Croatian seaside resort. Croatian Minister of the Sea and Transport Oleg Butković described that the declaration as a step toward achieving a maritime green evolution, adding that the declaration is based on five key points, environmental protection, digitisation, human resources, security and competitiveness. "These key chapters reflect the current situation when it comes to the challenges of maritime…

ZAGREB, March 12, 2020 - It is essential to preserve jobs and business activity, and specific measures to help businesses affected by the coronavirus epidemic will be known in the coming days, reporters were told after a meeting at the Finance Ministry on Wednesday. The meeting involved the ministers in charge of economic affairs and representatives of the business and banking sectors. Finance Minister Zdravko Marić said after the meeting that it had been agreed that preserving jobs was of paramount importance. He recalled that it had taken a lot of time to restore the number of jobs to the…

ZAGREB, March 11, 2020 - In January 2020, as compared to January 2019, retail trade turnover was 6.2% higher in real terms, which was the highest annual increase since February 2019, when it increased by 8.7%, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday. In January 2020, the total seasonally and working-day adjusted retail trade turnover was 2.7% higher than in December 2019 in real terms. The real retail trade turnover has been growing since June 2019. In December 2019, the annual growth was 4.5%. In January 2020, as compared to the same month of the previous year, retail trade…

ZAGREB, March 11, 2020 - Every farmer in Croatia can apply for an ePI electronic agricultural card, an official document issued by the Ministry of Agriculture to take farmers into the digital era and future online services, the ministry said on Wednesday. The card will enable farmers to conduct administrative procedures simply and quickly from home. The ePI will replace all existing cards that farmers have used until now. One of the advantages of the new card is that it enables applications for support in the AGRONET system to be conducted online, which will relieve the administration system of the…

ZAGREB, March 11, 2020 - The pace of hiring in the European Union accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2019 both on the quarter and on the year, with the same trend being recorded in Croatia, Eurostat said in its revised estimate on Tuesday. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the number of employed persons in the 27-member bloc rose by 0.3% from the previous quarter, following an increase of 0.1% in the third quarter. This raised the initial estimate for last year's final quarter by 0.1 percentage point. Year-on-year, the number of employed persons increased by 1%, which is…

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 10th of March, 2020, Croatian Zvecevo is set to extinguish part of its production and the number of workers in the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors will also be reduced, Zvecevo's management announced. ''Due to the negative market trends in 2019, as well as the projections for 2020, which significantly affect the profitability of all products in our product range, after several months of analysis of all production and business processes within the company, we've been forced to initiate the process of consolidation of the entire business with focusing on the profitability of the product…

ZAGREB, March 10, 2020 - Opatija is hosting a two-day maritime conference as part of Croatia's presidency of the Council of the EU at which participants are discussing digitisation, safety, environmental protection and boosting the status of maritime careers. Speaking of health challenges, European Maritime Safety Agency director Maja Markovčić Kostelac said a special recommendation was made, as part of the International Maritime Organization and health institutions, that applied to ships of all countries. The European Commission has issued a similar recommendation and the situation is under control for now, she added. The state secretary at the Sea and Transport…

ZAGREB, March 10, 2020 - Croatia's commodity exports in January 2020 totalled HRK 8.3 billion, up by 0.4% compared to January 2019, while the imports rose 1.3% to HRK 14 billion, according to provisional data provided by the national statistical office (DZS) on Tuesday. As a result, the country's foreign trade deficit was HRK 5.7 billion, which is by 154.3 million kuna more than in January 2019. The coverage of imports by exports went from 59.9% to 59.4%. Croatia's exports to other EU member-states rose by 3.6% to over six billion kuna on the year. On the other hand, exports…

Could a Slavonian revival be on the cards? While the region continues to undergo its signature hardships, some encouraging business news emerged out of Eastern Croatia last year... When you think of Slavonia, you likely think of what was once the bread basket of the entire country having now been left to rot, proverbially of course. The overlooked Eastern region of Croatia once fed the country, but is now struggling with its main export being man power and human labour heading off to other EU countries to try their luck at better lives and more economic stability. As Poslovni Dnevnik…