July the 10th, 2021 - Croatia has an enormous sum of money waiting to be utilised in various ways thanks to the European Union, but how will it do so? More importantly, what will be the effect on Croatian GDP?
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, this plan which involves this EU cash should raise Croatian GDP growth by 1.5 percentage points in 2021 and by 2.5 to 2.9 percentage points in all years until 2026, including that final year, which is a huge boost following the coronavirus pandemic which left horrendous scars on the Croatian and European economies.
It should create 21,000 new jobs, too, and this is just an assessment of the direct impact of all the investments envisaged in the plan, not including the many reforms, which are an equally important part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. If Croatia manages to close the half of the gap with the European Union average with structural reforms, in the next 20 years, Croatian GDP would be as much as 15 percent higher than today.
These are just some of the figures that European Commission experts came up with when analysing and approving the much talked about Croatian NPOO. After the approval of the Croatian plan, Vecernji list found out about their thoughts and impressions from a high-ranking European official in Brussels.
It should not be forgotten, they added from the Belgian capital, that in addition to these 6.3 billion euros provided by the completely new fund from the mechanism for recovery and resilience, Croatia has about 9 billion euros at its disposal from the classic, structural EU funds.
''In front of you is a gigantic effort, you need to be able to manage and implement projects that will see all that money spent in a very short amount of time. You need to focus on that common challenge,'' said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
After yesterday's green light from the European Commission, the EU Council has four weeks to adopt an implementing decision, which is a formal approval and allows for the payment of an advance of 13 percent of the value of the NPOO, which in the Croatian case totals about 819 million euros. In Brussels, everyone hopes that the Croatian plan will be approved by the Council before collective holidays begin during August.
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