The Varaždin-based Croatian company Varteks has been producing dresses, coats, jackets and other clothing for specialised purposes, including uniforms for the Croatian Army, the police and the like for 101 years now.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of January, 2019, in three production plants in a complex of red brick buildings in the centre of Varaždin, several hundred workers are working daily in one shift on quality garment collections. In Varaždin's Varteks, 24sata journalists were welcomed and hosted by Nenad Bakić, president of Varteks' administration. He took them through all three production facilities. That day, designers who came to Varteks presented Bakić and his associates the new women's collection - business elegance.

''First, we do prototypes of the clothing, then after consultations they go off for additional finishing should that be necessary. After that, we make a collector's sample, a hand-made version that is produced in a small number of copies. If there are no more changes to be made, we make and launch the product,'' explained Bakić. Currently, Varteks is launching its latest elegant collection made with younger people in mind, called Varteks Young.

''We can split production into several phases. Everything begins with the tailor, from the threading and onwards. There, the machine cutter does almost everything itself according to the instructions on the screen. After that, sewing begins. All the parts from the cutter are picked up and people connect them in smaller segments. Then everything is shifted into the assembly, the middle part of production, where some segments are assembled and come to the end with finishing and the final ironing. After that, what's most important to us is quality control. If everything is fine, the goods are sent to the warehouse and are made ready for shipping, to our stores or to our customers,'' explained Miljenko Vidaček, production manager at Varteks. He adds that it takes about four hours to make a suit.

Varteks produces a very wide range of merchandise, its production manager emphasises the fact that Varteks is among the most flexible companies in this part of Europe as a whole.

''We were coming to the end, pre-bankruptcy. We're incredibly grateful to Mr. Bakić for the fact that we're still here,'' Varteks' grateful employees conclude.

For more information on Croatian companies, products and services, as well as doing business in Croatia and the overall business and investment climate, follow our dedicated business page.

Four Croatian cities are trying to make it easier at least financially for parents when it comes to caring for their children. Umag, Belišće, Vrlika and Obrovac are the only Croatian towns to ensure free kindergarten for kids, removing at least one worry from the heads of their parents.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 21st of January, 2019, in addition to employment, decent salaries and a resolved housing issue for young families, a key prerequisite for changing the negative demographic picture in the Republic of Croatia is the development of a network of nurseries and kindergartens which are made readily available to parents in need of them.

The Croatian towns in which parents, when it comes to kindergartens, have at least the financial side of things taken care of for them are Umag, Belišće, Vrlika and Obrovac. These towns are, as previously mentioned, the only four towns in the whole of Croatia that provide free kindergartens for all their children, as was reported by the portal Gradonacelnik.hr.

Until just a few days ago, there were only three towns offering such measures - Umag, Vrlika and Obrovac, and now they have been joined by Belišće, whose administration, headed by Dinka Burić, recently lowered the prices of kindergartens from 410 to 300 kuna. Upon the further analysis of budget items and revenues, they have since realised that they can provide an additional 700,000 kuna, giving parents in the area completely free kindergartens for their kids.

Although a formal decision is still yet to be made on the 28th of January, the move has been effective since January the 1st, meaning that the parents who have children needing kindergartens in Belišće no longer have to think about payments of any kind.

Thanks to European Unoon tenders and intensified local self-government activities in project preparation, nearly 200 new kindergartens are being prepared or constructed in their various different stages across the Republic of Croatia, with lack of capacity and the unavailability of accommodation becoming less and less of a problem.

Give our dedicated lifestyle  page a follow for more on Croatia's demographic problem, and to stay up to date with other Croatian towns and cities which follow in the footsteps of Umag, Obrovac, Vrlika and Belišće.

As the Croatian demographic crisis continues, many Croatian towns, cities and municipalities have suggested and enforced their own measures to encourage people not only to stay where they are, but to bring new life into the country. What better way to do that than offer cash for each newborn baby? Plitvice Lakes Municipality (Općina Plitvička Jezera) has raised its amount by 2,000 kuna.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 11th of January, 2019, the right to a one-time cash sum is realised when at least one of the parents of a newborn child has a permanent place of residence in the area of ​​the Plitvice Lakes Municipality.

This very welcome news comes from the Plitvice Lakes Municipality itself and as Likaclub.eu writes, the amount of one-off cash sums paid directly by the Plitvice Lakes Municipality to the parents of newborn children from the area covered by that municipality has now been increased.

The amount given to new parents in the Plitvice Lakes Municipality has so far been 3,000 kuna for the first-born child, and then 500 kuna more for each child after that.

By the decision of Mayor Ante Kovač on January the 2nd, 2019, the Plitvice Lakes Municipality will now pay parents a sum of 5,000 kuna for every newborn this year, which is 2,000 kuna more than it has been so far.

The birth of the second child will see new parents receive 5,500 kuna, while for the third newborn child, the parents have the right to assistance in the amount of 6,000 kuna, or for each subsequent child born, 500 kuna more.

Make sure to stay up to date with our dedicated lifestyle and politics pages for more on the Croatian demographic crisis and the measures being put in place by towns, cities and municipalities across the country to help combat the continuing negative effects.

The Croatian demographic crisis is something that is making all the headlines for all the wrong reasons of late, but just how ''new'' is this negative and concerning trend? It would appear that the tap has been trickling for a great number of years. The popular historic Dalmatian city of Šibenik is an unlikely but excellent example of this.

As SibenikIN writes on the 8th of January, 2019, in the face of the Croatian demographic crisis, in his latest blog post, Ivo Jakovljević has written about the gradual reduction of the Šibenik population since the beginning of the Homeland War, the largest reduction caused by the plague back in 1649. All this, as Jakovljević writes in his blog post, has influenced Šibenik's age and education composition with long-term consequences, even in terms of the local surname composition.

The largest demographic changes in 300 years occurred in the area of ​​Šibenik-Knin County during the Homeland War between the years 1991-1995 this was highlighted by the population census taken in 1991, and then again in 2001. Not only did the total number of inhabitants decrease significantly (in part due to deaths on both the Croatian and the Serbian side, and mainly in the face of forced migration), but there were also changes in many other areas, too.

As opposed to the economy being the main driving force for the negative trends the country is experiencing today, war migrations played a huge role in the Croatian demographic crisis back then. During the Homeland War, from the summer of 1991 onwards, a lot of movement could be witnessed. These displaced people were predominantly Croats, and also some Serbs who didn't agree with Greater Serbian politics. Individuals and families were expelled from their places of residence in many cases during the war, and many of these people moved to Šibenik and the unoccupied areas of Šibenik-Knin County, while a smaller number went abroad.

As of mid-1992, amid the continual spread of the war in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, many refugees, made up mainly of Croats and Bosnians, also arrived in the wider Šibenik area. At the beginning of August 1995, a significant number of Serbs left not only Šibenik-Knin County but Croatia as a whole, heading generally in the direction of the Banja Luka area and towards Belgrade, and from those areas they were displaced in all directions, with some even heading towards the north of Kosovo.

Hundreds of them (mostly younger, more mobile and better educated people) then continued moving onwards to Central Europe, with some of them even heading much further afield, outside of Europe to Canada and Australia. During the time of the pre-war crisis in Kosovo, after 1995, many people from Janjevo arrived in the village of Kistanje, and later settled and declared themselves as Catholics.

At the end of this pattern of deep demographic shock, the total number of inhabitants in Šibenik-Knin County during the period between 1991 to 2001 decreased from 152,125 to just 109,799. According to the latest estimates by the Central Bureau of Statistics (due to the chronic low birth rate and the somewhat new trend of economic emigration - predominantly to Zagreb, Germany, and Ireland) in 2019, there may be less than 100,000 in total.

Thus, from 1991 to 2001 the total number of inhabitants in the aforementioned county decreased by 42,326 persons - almost one third! Then, from 2001 to 2019, by about ten thousand. Among the emigrants from 1991 to 2001, almost three quarters (or 74 percent of them) were Serbs.

In Šibenik-Knin County, Serbs once made up as much as 40.7 percent of the population. Just ten years later, Serbs were no longer a majority in any one of the counties. This trend continued, and in 2011, the number of Serbs in the county decreased from 60,800 in 1991 to 11,518 in 2011, and in Šibenik, there were 1,434 Serbs recorded in 2011. On the other side of that same medal, the number of Croats in the total composition the population in the county increased from 58.42 percent in 1991, to 83.80 percent in 2001, and then to 85 percent in 2011.

The same trend changed the confessional composition of Šibenik-Knin County. The number of Catholics increased from 54.9 percent in 1991 to 82.8 percent in 2001, while the share of those of the Orthodox faith decreased from 38.02 to 7.31 percent.

The long-term consequences of war victims, forced and voluntary emigrations, and war and transitional economic damage in the broader Šibenik hinterland, right up to Drniš and Knin, have resulted in some significant changes in the area's surname structure, which - judging from both from the 2001 census and from the much later 2011 census, has seen the apparent disappearance of a subset of traditional Croatian and Serbian surnames from the Šibenik hinterland.

Want to find out more about the Croatian demographic crisis and much more? Give our dedicated lifestyle and politics pages a follow.

The demographic has had numerous repercussions on Croatian society as a whole, and a lack of adequate or qualified labour force for Croatian employers is perhaps the most hard hit sector of them all. But just how is the tourism sector doing?

The paradoxical society which somehow manages to exist despite all and any circumstance in Croatia is that there is no work for a lot of people, while on the other hand there is a lot of work on offer but nobody to actually do it.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of January, 2019, from November 2018 to February 2019, HZZ is conducting a survey among Croatia's unemployed population on their intentions and their readiness to work along the coast in various tourist destinations.

Croatian employers, more specifically hoteliers from numerous tourist resorts up and down the Croatian coast are searching out potential seasonal staff from continental Croatia earlier and earlier with each passing year, with their sights set on the overlooked eastern Croatia in particular. Thus, HZZ's Vinkovci-based regional office has already organised as many as eight employer visits for the purpose of seeking seasonal workers for 2019's upcoming tourist season this summer.

In order to better respond to the demands of Croatian employers and to better coordinate the job supply with the demand, HZZ's aforementioned survey focused primarily on how Croatia's unemployed population feel about working on the coast should the opportunity be offered to them.

The day of jobs in tourism for the Slavonian counties is set to be held on January the 18th in Osijek, and HZZ's Vinkovci branch office is organising transport on the day for all those interested, Glas Slavonije writes.

As of now, it is unofficially known that Croatian employers are willing to offer higher salaries, raising them by 10 to 20 percent for chefs, waiters and confectioners, with almost all potential job offers including not only free accommodation, but free food for the duration of the work too.

In the past year, from January to September, the most sought after were employees chefs, assistant chefs, waiters, cleaners, receptionists, people to work in shops, and other occupations in the area of ​​accommodation and food preparation and service, as well as the wholesale and retail trade.

In that period, there was a pressing need for 23,652 seasonal workers in Croatia, and a little less, 22,144, were actually employed during that time, which indicates that Croatia's lack of seasonal workers is not significant or particularly worrying, yet.

Make sure to stay up to date with our dedicated lifestyle and business pages for more information on Croatian employers and much more.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 4th of January, 2018, for the whole area of ​​the town of Trilj, only eight building permits were issued for the construction of family homes in 2018.

Trilj, a town and municipality located in inland Dalmatia boasts 26 settlements which extend to 267 square kilometres, and in which 9,109, just inhabitants lived according to the 2011 census. This number is certainly significantly lower due to Croatia's ongoing demographic crisis and migration from all over Croatia which continues on today.

This worrying information set alarm bells ringing for Trilj's mayor, Ivan Šipic. While the Čaporice work zone and the 3LJ project both continue to try to secure as many new jobs as possible for Trilj's residents, and a number of other moves and investments are attempting to reverse the increasingly unfavourable demographic trends facing not only Trilj but the entire country, the notion of there never having been a smaller number of permits issued for the construction of family homes clearly shook the mayor.

Owing to this, an idea has been arrived to in order to encourage more people to request permits build houses. Šipić proposed, and the town council unanimously accepted, that in Trilj's budget for 2019, the amount of 300,000 kuna has been allocated to stimulate the construction of family houses, Slobodna Dalmacija writes.

"Many Trilj locals have plots, but for building permits they have to allocate at least 15,000 kuna. For many of our fellow citizens, that's a very large amount and even bigger brake when it comes to the decision on getting involved in construction, and as mayor, I've decided that all Trilj locals who want to build family houses will get their building permits free of charge,'' stated Mayor Šipić. Priority will be given to young married couples who choose to live with their families.

Make sure to stay up to date with our dedicated lifestyle and politics pages for more on Croatia's demographic crisis and the measures being proposed and adopted in order to combat it. If it's just inland Dalmatia you're interested in, follow our dedicated inland Dalmatia page.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 31st of December, 2018, Finance Minister Zdravko Marić presented the Croatian Government's new ''demographic measure'' on Sunday for Dnevnik HTV, by which the non-taxable amount of so-called ''newborn allowance'' has been raised to a very handsome 10,000 kuna.

"An employee who has a baby'' said Marić, "her employer has the ability and the right to give her money for the newborn baby. The non-taxable amount is 3,362 kuna, but this amount has been raised three times higher and amounts to 10,000 kuna,'' announced the finance minister during an interview with HTV.

The order by the Croatian Government which regards this measure will be published on Wednesday, January the 2nd, 2019, and will come into force as of Thursday, January the 3rd, but it is already technically applicable today, added the minister.

Looking back, this has been the year in which Marić, who has been serving in the Croatian Government for a while now, stated that he was satisfied with continuing the trend of Croatia's declining public debt, which fell by 10 percentage points in just three years. It is expected that this year,  interest rates will fall below 9 billion kuna.

"Since 2015, we've cut interest rates by more than a quarter, we're paying lower interest rates, and I'm particularly pleased with what we've done for the highways and for the roads," said Minister Marić, emphasising that they continue to remain in "Croatian hands".

Recalling the alarming debts which still very much haunt Croatia's healthcare system, he said that redistributing money to the Ministry of Health can't be a viable solution to that problem.

"I'm happy that we've been able to reduce payment deadlines, especially the state ones, for a year. I'd like to see if these reduced payment periods reflected on the reduced cost of purchasing medication," Marić said.

He emphasised the need for the Croatian Government to apply a combination of measures on the revenue and expenditure side of the health budget.

"We have contributed through the third round of tax breaks, we've raised the budget for healthcare by 1 percentage point, around 1.350 billion kuna, but that won't be enough," he said, concluding that the Croatian healthcare system must be financially sustainable.

Make sure to follow our dedicated politics page for much more.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of December, 2018, upon presenting the most important plan for the Slavonian town of Valpovo, Mayor Matko Šutalo emphasised the fact that the record increase was the result of the joint work of the employees of Valpovo's new administration.

With just one single vote against it, the Slavonian town's council adopted the budget proposal for 2019 on Thursday, without any major objections. The amount is a welcome 124 million kuna, which is otherwise the largest amount proposed for Valpovo so far.

As previously stated, during the presentation of the most important draft plan for this continental Croatian town to date, Mayor Matko Šutalo emphasized that the record increase was the result of the joint work of the employees of the town of Valpovo's new administration, the Valpovo entrepreneurial centre and local development agencies, which, over the last year and half, had projects worth a massive 64.787.451,64 kuna.

The stated value doesn't include the value of the projects that are still waiting for the results of tenders, which amount to a further 23,401,919.59 kuna. In addition, projects in their preparation phase worth 113.7 million kuna are yet to come, and in the very creation of Valpovo's generous 2019 budget, local citizens took part in putting forward their proposals.

In accordance with the proposals put forward by the Council of HDZ, HSU and NL, two new amendments were adopted in the town's budget concerning the decrease of the price of kindergartens by 200 kuna and an increase in the amount given to parents for newborn children.

Namely, as of next year, 3000 kuna will be paid to the parents for their first born child, the birth of their second child will see a payment of 5000 kuna, and for the third, and every next child, they'll receive 7000 kuna for each. The measure intends to work as an incentive, and will be used as Valpovo's contribution to mitigate Croatia's extremely negative demographic trends, which in Valpovo and Slavonia as a whole, continue to be the most bleak.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more.

December 17, 2018 — The Croatian government is set to confirm an increase in the annual quota of foreign workers allowed to work in Croatia, to shore up labour deficits across several economic sectors, according to Vecernji List.

The new quota allows 63,600 foreigners to work in Croatia next year. It includes increases for the healthcare, social service, and tourism industries.

Demographers from the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, Ivan Čipin and Šime Smolić, calculated that one person travels into the country every 38 minutes and 14 seconds. Presumably, some of them come to work in Croatia. Meanwhile, people continue to migrate three times faster, with one person leaving the country to work elsewhere ever 13 minutes and 54 seconds.

The proposed quotas allow for 200 permanent nurses or technicians, a first for that industry. Fifty would work in the healthcare system, and 150 in the homes for the elderly.

The new quota also includes a call for social welfare workers. Only five foreigners were employed in this sector in 2018 — as guide dog instructors.

As of next year, 460 slots will open in some sectors of the social welfare system. Apart from nurses, at-home caretakers and homes for the elderly and children, the system lacks cooks, cleaners. The market is also open to ten physiotherapists, work therapists, social workers and five foreign psychologists and speech therapists.

Plenty of Work In Croatia, Not Enough Workers

"It’s only a drop in the sea of our needs,” Jozo Tolić, entrepreneur and representative of the association of owners of private homes, told Večernji. “If there were workers, homes for the elderly and the disabled could immediately employ 2,000 people. My estimate is that the social welfare system will need 3,500 workers very quickly. The proposed quota is not enough; it should be increased.”

Tolić added private facilities are burdened with the requests for accommodations but reject them even though they have empty rooms because they do not have enough staff.

“You can not take people if there is no one to feed and take care of them,” he said.

The salary of the nurses in the nursing home ranges from 3,600 to 4,000 kuna per month, and nurses from 5,300 to 5,900 kuna.

"We would also have a thousand euro monthly salary if we could charge so much from the user, but we can not,” Tolic said.

“You can not find a home cleaner in Zagreb even if you paid in gold,” Tolic complained.

Only in this year, according to his data, 1,800 nurses left Croatia. Most headed to Germany, where they earn EUR 1,800 to 2,000 per month.

Of the 63,600 new slots, 41,810 licenses relate to new employment, 6,540 are seasonal employment permits in tourism, agriculture and forestry, 250 allowances to switch roles, and 15,000 extensions of existing licenses.

All the quotas are meaningless if nascent wage increases slow down or stop altogether, according to Krešimir Sever, president of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions.

“The competitiveness of the Croatian economy cannot be built on low-paid labour,” he said. “The government increases the quota just as momentum for wage increases build.”

“There is a lot of illogicality in the Government’s proposal,” he said, citing the five permits for foreign psychologists as an example when over 200 Croatian shrinks are unemployed.

Unmet Quotas

Quotes for foreign workers in the tourism and hospitality industries will double next year, even though Interior Ministry data show new hires fell short of last year's quota.

Tourism companies and caterers were able to employ 600 foreign chefs this year but used less than half the amount by the end of October 2018.

Next year’s quota is increasing by one thousand, not counting the chefs of international cuisine and auxiliary workers.

Shippers could have employed about a thousand foreign drivers this year, yet by the end of October, they hired less than 50.

The tech industry was one of the few economic sectors to use a majority of its allotted work permits in 2018, with nearly all of the 300 spots filled. For some reason, it’s 2019 quota will drop by 120 work permits.

Follow TCN's dedicated page about Croatia's demographic crisis.

There can be no denying that Croatia's overall demographic picture is grim. An astonishing amount of people have left, mainly since the country's accession to the European Union, when borders ''opened'' and life was made easier for those seeking opportunities abroad, but also since before then. With an enormous number of Croats having fled the country, mainly from the overlooked continental and eastern areas, the already poor Croatian demographic picture is growing more and more bleak.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 13th of December, 2018, over the last six or seven years, all the first graders from the entire territory of the Levanjska Varoš municipality, with its 136 square kilometres, in which there are just nine settlements, will sit behind just three school desks, according to a depressing report on Croatia's continually worsening demographic crisis by Glas Slavonije.

The small number of children born in this part of Osijek-Baranja County this year offers no hope for this municipality, at least at the moment, and with very little room for optimism in expectations of its demographic recovery, other measures are being sought.

Cash for every birth is an incentive for many, as the aforementioned area is one of the least populated areas, the first association of which is one of ​​poor development, a small population, and one of the areas in the whole of the Republic of Croatia which is the most in need.

In Levanjska Varoš, there are currently less than 6.9 inhabitants per square kilometre. The last census, which was carried out back in 2011, stated that there are 1,250 inhabitants, but, according to the mayor Slavko Tidlačka, for a long time now there have been less than 1,000, about 950 people who live in one of the nine settlements.

Like the poor Croatian demographic picture in general, the prospects for many local villages in this area, as well as across the country as a whole, with a little more ''leg room'' in some areas, are still extremely bad.

Until recently, this municipality has been awarding parents a sum of 1,000 kuna for each newborn child, but now that amount has been significantly boosted. Last year's decision on the right to financial compensation for newborn children in the area was passed. According to the details of that move, parents are paid 2,000 kuna for their first and second child, 5,000 kuna for a third, and for the fourth and then every next child, as much as 10,000 kuna.

Make sure to follow our lifestyle page for more information on the poor demographic image in Croatia and much more.