At the beginning of April 2019, the Ministry of Economy launched a new website dedicated to investors - Invest Croatia.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of April, 2019, Invest Croatia is available in both Croatian and English language and contains an abundance of useful and necessary information for the preparation and eventual realisation of investment projects in the Republic of Croatia, from general macroeconomic indicators, all the way to the examination of entrepreneurial zones and a list of available incentives for investors.
After making a decision or selecting Croatia for the realisation of an investment plan, the next step for the investor is to find an adequate location and set about completing the investment project. In addition, on the brand new Invest Croatia page, a map of available entrepreneurial zones by county - http://investcroatia.gov.hr/zone/, with a very detailed view of the size of the available land, its purpose and prices, all the way up to information about communal connections and companies which already operate in this area are readily available.
Furthermore, would-be investors will have a detailed overview of the steps and necessary actions that need to be taken in realising their respective investment projects http://investcroatia.gov.hr/investirati-pregled-koraka-realizaciji-investijskih-projekta/.
In addition to this, Invest Croatia has several very useful tools, such as the Investment Calculator, which allows you to calculate the amount of incentives an investor can get for their project. The calculation is based on the introduction of a number of specific variables - the type of investment, foreseen investment costs, the planned number of new jobs, employee average salaries, the investment location, and the enterprise/company size.
Publications posted on the new Invest Croatia page will offer proper assistance to investors in decision-making, as well as during the actual investment project implementation process. They include an investment guide, a catalog of investment opportunities and sector publications, as well as an array of successful stories of companies who are already operating in the Republic of Croatia, and official statistics claim there are almost 16 thousand such companies at the moment.
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Economic growth in Europe and Central Asia slowed down to 3.1 percent in 2018, and it is predicted to fall to 2.1 percent in 2019 due to a slower rate of global growth and uncertain prospects.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of April, 2019, the Croatian economy continued to grow at a rate of 2.6 percent in 2018, while in the forthcoming period from 2019-2021 moderate growth is expected at an average rate of 2.5 percent, according to the World Bank's most recent report on the latest economic trends in Europe and Central Asia (N1).
The countries of the region recorded different rates of growth. Growth at the regional level has greatly contributed to positive developments in the GDP data of Russia as the largest economy in the region, just as the accelerated growth did in Albania, Hungary, Poland, and Serbia. On the other hand, Turkey has experienced a significant slowdown in growth due to the pressure of the financial market and currency issues. Namely, in 2019, it is expected to grow by 1.0 percent, which is a significant drop compared to 7.4 percent back in 2017.
"Europe and Central Asia are vulnerable to global uncertainty and are faced with serious long-term challenges such as aging populations, a decline in productivity, a decline in investment, and climate change. It is good that there are a whole range of possible solutions available when public policies are geared towards mitigating these challenges,'' stated Cyril Muller, Vice President of the World Bank for Europe and Central Asia.
"Countries should work harder to attract investment, enhance their participation in global value chains, and ensure that more people are able to access financial services such as bank accounts and electronic payments."
Regional growth is expected to recover its power in 2020 and 2021, as it is predicted that the gradual recovery of Turkey will serve as a counterweight to the restrained activity in Central Europe as a whole. However, the long-term challenges of the region are still substantial.
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At the beginning of 2019, the Croatian company Include signed a two-year distribution agreement with one of the largest global providers of telecommunications services - Deutsche Telekom.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 4th of April, 2019, 42 global markets, six continents, 260 cities across the world, more than 1000 smart benches installed, cooperation with major global corporations, the European Parliament, Deloitte, Forbes... all in just four years - this is just part of the successful results the Croatian company Include from Solin has achieved since May 2015, when the first smart bench was introduced, until the beginning of 2019.
In the first quarter, Solin's Include didn't manage to acheive any real or significant results, as most markets were still covered by snow, and the first installations usually only begin in spring, but in 2019, Include achieved significant export performance. The amount of ordered benches, when compared to the first quarter of 2018, just one year ago, increased by an impressive 109 percent to a staggering 2.3 million kuna, while total revenues increased by 115 percent.
At the beginning of this year, Include signed a two-year distribution agreement with one of the largest global providers of telecommunications services, Deutsche Telekom. The contract was signed for fifty global markets, and Include became one of the few Croatian companies with this type of somewhat prestigious contract.
In January this year, 44 Steora smart benches worth over 1.1 million kuna were sold and a new market opened its doors, Poland. The largest share of the bench sales relate to exports, and the Steora smart bench has found its way across Europe, having been delivered to Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Spain.
In February this year, Include continued its export activities - with new orders from neighbouring Montenegro, a new market opened (Chile, with two Steora Standard benches) and the month ended with deliveries of 27 smart bench to Greece, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Italy, and Hungary.
March 2019, as the ''test polygon'' for spring, resulted in orders of a new product from Include's sales portfolio - the Monna cyclo tables for Dublin. The new product was presented at the Smart City Expo World Congress in mid-November 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. In addition, two new distribution agreements were signed (Slovenia - 50 benches, France - 72 benches), five Steora benches for Chile and Bermuda were ordered, as were 38 benches for other European countries - the United Kingdom, France, and Montenegro.
It's certainly important to highlight the continuation of Include's global digital outdoor advertising project via the Steora Urban+ smart benches. After they started the project with the installation of fifteen Steora Urban+ benches in Bratislava (at the best locations in the city), at the end of 2018, the project increased its pace in March this year with the another fifteen new Steora Urban+ smart benches, this time in Dublin, Ireland.
Currently, two major cities in the European Union are using Include's external digital advertising system through the Steora smart bench, it is an advanced DOOH system developed within the company itself. The system works using Facebook-like technology, enabling you to choose multiple advertising screens at the same time, set marketing campaign goals, and track advertising results in real-time.
Croatia's Include expects significant business results in the upcoming two quarters, and in addition to that, the realisation of a new investment round is being prepared, followed by the expansion of production capacities and the recruitment of new employees.
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As Adriano Milovan/Novac writes on the 2nd of April, 2019, the economic expansion period for most of the transition countries, including the Republic of Croatia, is now over, and in the coming years we can count only on very modest rates of economic growth, this was the message from experts from the renowned Vienna Institute for International Economics Studies (WIIW).
According to the latest forecasts of the Vienna Institute, this year, Croatia can expect a growth rate of 2.6 percent. However, in the coming years, economic growth will slow down even more, meaning that the Croatian economy will likely grow at a rate of 2.5 percent in 2020 and again in 2021. Although the GDP growth rate of 2.5 percent doesn't deviate much from the previous growth rates in Croatia, given that they were still less than in other comparable countries of the so-called "New Europe", it's worth noting that this rate is still less than was previously expected.
Additionally, and more concerningly yet, the Republic of Croatia will be among the new EU member states with the lowest rates of economic growth of all. On the other hand, the fastest growing economies among transition countries will rather surprisingly be non-EU European countries, such as Kosovo and Albania and even more surprisingly, Moldova, at least according to an analysis taken by the esteemed Vienna Institute. According to these forecasts, Kosovo's economy, for example, was to grow at a rate of 4.1 percent this year, in the following year at a rate of four percent, and in 2021, at a rate of 3.9 percent.
In their forecasts, the analysts of the Vienna Institute cited the slowdown of economic growth in the world as a whole, especially in Germany, and the strengthening of protectionism in world trade and uncertainty brought about by Brexit (should it occur at all), as among the main reasons for the ''cooling'' of the transition economies.
Openly, however, the question remains about how the current crisis in Uljanik will reflect on the Croatian economy as a whole. Vladimir Gligorov, a longtime analyst at the Vienna Institute and now an external associate, says the events in Uljanik will have negative effects on the Croatian economy in the short term, primarily through the activation of state guarantees and the cost of dealing with former workers who will be left jobless, but in the medium term, it shouldn't actually reflect all that much on the macroeconomic image of the country that significantly.
The attitudes of Croatian macroeconomists, Zeljko Lovrinčević from the Zagreb Institute of Economics and Zdeslav Šantić, the chief economist of OTP banka, don't differ significantly from the above statement from the Vienna Institute, and they also don't expect huge consequences on the Croatian economy from the collapse of Uljanik. Moreover, Lovrinčević believes that the first half of this year could be even better for Croatia than expected, whereas we will likely only feel a slight slowdown in the second half of this year and next year.
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Click here for the original article by Adriano Milovan for Novac/Jutarnji
AMPnet is the best Croatian startup, and it's going to the big final in Krakow, Poland.
As VLM/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of April, 2019, AMPnet's platform focuses on energy cooperatives, an alternative model of sales for electrical energy and the financing of renewable energy sources. Mislav Javor from AMPnet pointed out that the product is now finished, and how their very first clients are knocking at their door.
With the winning project, AMPnet IO d.o.o. was proclaimed as the best Croatian startup this year between nine finalists at the national final of the PowerUp! competition held within the framework of the LEAP Summit, and organised by Invento Capital Partners in Zagreb.
The winning Croatian team will be presented at the Grand Final in Krakow, Poland on May the 21st, where they will compete for large cash prizes of 50,000, 10,000 and 5,000 euros, while the best project will be offered an additional investment of 150,000 euros as well as participation in the prestigious accelerator EIT InnoEnergy Highway, which helps in the transformation of startups, from their early stages of development right up to becoming a successful business venture.
Energy in a new way!
''We're very pleased with this competition organised by Innoenergy together with Invento Capital Partners. We believe that all of the teams have very high quality products, but we're happy that even with such a strong competition, the jury decided on us. We have been developing this product for two years and this victory is one of the moments that confirms that we're on the right track,'' said Javor.
''The PowerUp! competition by Innoenergy's winner, AMPnet, is a team that has a scalable product. Until now, they've shown that they have certain shifts in the market, they have contacts with potential buyers and have managed to attract investors. So, they only need an additional boost to reach the stage from which they can expand across Europe, and hopefully ultimately to the United States,'' said jury member Stevica Kuharski (Fil Rouge Capital).
''I'm truly delighted with the number of quality projects. This was one of the competitions where members of the jury had a difficult job choosing a project that would represent Croatia at the Grand Final in Krakow. What we can do, as a local partner of Innoenergy in Croatia, is to insist that many more of these projects are funded by Innoenergy, regardless of them having not been chosen today. The AMPnet project itself, and the team behind the project, demonstrated the highest degree of readiness, project development and market entrance possibilities,'' said Dalibor Marijanović, founder and partner of Invento Capital Partners, the local HUB in charge of supporting the aforementioned competition in Croatia.
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Click here for the original article by VLM for Poslovni Dnevnik
Two years ago, Ivica Todorić signed Lex Agrokor, handing over the control of his gigantic company to the control of the state in an attempt to save it from collapsing. Since then, the largest restructuring in this part of Europe has taken place, a tumultuous phase we are now coming to the end of.
As Agrokor and all of its tremendous woes finally enter the realms of Croatia's business history, Fortenova begins its operations on a clean(er) slate.
As Jadranka Dozan/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of April, 2019, as of today, which was already publicly announced by the former Agrokor as the date of the beginning of the settlement, Fortenova Group, the company's brand new name, begins its work. Yesterday, all Konzums were closed for the day, and a new chapter has now begun.
From the technical-operational aspect, the most visible test of the success of the enormous amount of preparatory actions for this "business migration" will be shown today in Konzum. From a normative aspect, all of the necessary enforcement documents were completed late last week. Fabris Peruško, the company's government appointed extraordinary commissioner and the temporary creditor's council agreed their final texts on Thursday. On Friday, just one day later, the Commercial Court in Zagreb issued a statement, and Judge Nevenka Siladi Rstić then issued a decision and approved the aforementioned documents.
Two days before, the conclusion was published explicitly specified the role(s) of the temporary creditor's council and the extraordinary commissioner in the further IU procedure, which could take a further three years. There was obviously a disagreement when it came to the terms of the need for harmonisation of the final acts between Fabris Peruško and the temporary creditor's council, so the session of the creditor's council lasted for two days.
Until the end of the procedure, the creditor's council now has the right and the duty (along with the court) to monitor how business is being done, supervise the execution of the settlement, and Peruško's work, including overseeing payment statements, checking account turnovers, and approving decisions in the settlement's further implementation.
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Click here for the original article by Jadranka Dozan for Poslovni Dnevnik
Croatian companies have a chance for further growth and more exporting should Croatia decide to deepen its business ties and cooperation with China, the country which is currently undertaking the mammoth task of constructing Pelješac bridge.
As Suzana Varosanec/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 31st of March, 2019, at the 8th Summit of heads of government of central and eastern European countries and China, which will be held from the 9th to the 12th of April in Dubrovnik, the "Dubrovnik Guidelines" document is expected to be adopted, which will lay out the activities in this format in the forthcoming phase.
The summit on the EU and China set to take place in the Belgian capital of Brussels on the 9th of April is expected with interest, and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang is coming to Croatia. There are bilateral talks between Keqiang and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković on the agenda, as well as the signing of several already concluded bilateral agreements in Zagreb. In line with the things that are set to be dealt with and concluded at the summit, Croatia and China could strengthen their blossoming cooperation with as many as ten brand new agreements. Other major Croatian expectations for the strengthening of overall relations with China are also awaited with gritted teeth, with the greatest interest being expressed in the areas of infrastructure, tourism and SMEs.
After the construction of Pelješac bridge, which is being built by China's CRBC, will yet more new infrastructural advances, such as the modernisation of Croatia's railway system, soon come to pass? The plans are also for the Chinese and Croatian prime ministers to visit this huge construction site down in southern Dalmatia. The Chinese delegation will consist of around 250 members, and that isn't including the 300 business community representatives coming to the 9th business forum ''16 plus 1''.
A total of more than 700 entrepreneurs have been registered, and many opportunities are on offer to Croatian companies when looking at entering the giant Chinese market, meaning that the initiative is on them. B2B meetings can be arranged with the help of an application created by the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK), and as Croatia's SME coordinator, it will officially launch the 16 + 1 coordination mechanism for small and medium-sized enterprises. The major promise for Croatian companies which operate within a multitude of different sectors lies in exports when it comes to deeper cooperation in doing business with China.
Croatia's visibility for the Chinese is continually growing, by about fifteen percent annually, while the number of tourists from China has increased by an enormous 120 percent over the past two years alone. In 2019, a record 300,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit Croatia, which is the fastest growing market in the whole of the Republic of Croatia.
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Click here for the original article by Suzana Varosanec for Poslovni Dnevnik
According to food expenditure statistics, Croatia is still spending significantly more than the European average, with the British paying the least towards food and drink in all of Europe.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 30th of March, 2019, expenditures for transport of the average Croatian family were equal to the cost of housing and for the first time, they reached fifteen percent of the average household budget. Based on the Household consumption survey, which is otherwise conducted every three years, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the average Croatian family spent 82,530 kuna per household in 2017, which is a monthly cost of about 6,800 kuna.
Croatia takes first place when it comes to the amount allocated to food in the household budget, but it is about five percentage points less than ten years ago when every third kuna was spent on food, Večernji list writes. The other countries which follow Croatis are Romania, where 26 percent of the typical household budget goes to food, while in Serbia, which is considered a third country, yet remains an EU candidate, that stands at 22 percent.
According to data on food expenditures, Croatia is still significantly above the European average, where 12 percent of household budgets typically go on food and drink, and in developed western economies, that figure is usually between 7 and 10 percent. The dominance of food expenditures is a feature of poorer countries with lower wages. Food prices in Croatia are similar, if not more expensive than in Western Europe, while salaried employees receive three to four times lower salaries, which ensure a much higher quality of life and go on including things such as outings, recreation, travel, and further education.
In Croatia, there is still one item where the standard of living has remained the same to a certain extent, and that is the typical cost of housing and the consumption of energy, to which 15.7 percent of the household budget goes, while at the EU level, the energy bills and rent account for a much higher 24 percent of the typical household budget. The British pay the leasr for food, and it typically accounts for a mere 7.2 percent of the British household budget, yet on the other hand, 27 percent of a typical British household budget is spent on various housing costs. Only Cyprus, Lithuania and Malta have lower housing costs than Croatia.
When looking at nominal amounts, just a couple of years ago, the average Croatian household spent 21,353 kuna per year on food and drink, of which the highest costs are for meat, costing about 6,700 kuna, and non-alcoholic beverages, costing 1,900 kuna, these beverages were mostly coffee, mineral water and various types of juices. In Croatia, at least according to the latest statistics, there is actually less smoking and drinking going on, and alcohol and cigarettes have fallen below three percent of the typical household budget to 2.9 percent (2,421 kuna per year), for the first time ever.
In Croatia, communication costs continue to above the EU average, on which 2.5 percent of the household budget is spent. Bulgaria and Serbia are the most similar to Croatia in terms of spending, while communication costs in other post-socialist countries is significantly cheaper and accounts for about three percent of the typical household budget. The average Croatian family pays 4,113 kuna annually for telephone services, which is almost twice as much as it allocates for health care services. For transport, about 13,000 kuna is spent annually, while clothing and footwear have about 6,000 kuna spent on them.
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As Novac/Gradonacelnik.hr writes on the 29th of March, 2019, Ogulin has made a great many steps forward economically.
''Across all areas, the numbers are growing and visible progress has been made. We believe that our honest and committed work and the desire to contribute to the development of Ogulin in all fields has been recognised and that it's the only reason for our victory, and at the same time, the foundation on which we'll build our further activities and plans,'' said Mayor Domitrović for Gradonačelnik.hr who won a majority in the City Council three weeks ago.
Early elections held in Ogulin three weeks ago, where SDP won by a landslide, winning 9 out of 17 seats in the City Council, saw a somewhat impossible situation which had taken hold of the local area finally overcome. The citizens of Ogulin came out and gave their support, SDP's list won a majority and with its nine mandates at the constituent session of the City Council scheduled for April the 5th, it can independently form a government, declare what the budget will be, and proceed with the implementation of all of Ogulin's planned projects.
Only five SDP councilors entered during the recent local elections in the City Council, so the majority of nine councilors formed with three councilors from the now independent Željko Stipetić's list (former HSP AS) and one councilor of the DSS came to be. However, after the coalition collapsed at the end of last year, Mayor Domitrović remained without the support of the City Council, which is why the budget wasn't adopted for this year, so the government, according to what is set out by law, dissolved the City Council and announced early elections.
''We believe that our victory is the result of our work in the past year and a half, which our citizens have recognised. We took the reigns with a simple way of being that involves work, order and discipline, and the results we achieved were that people, having first given me their trust me a mayor in 2017, have now given that same trust to the party who had me run as a candidate, because in a year and half, we've shown that we can do much more and do it in a much better way than our predecessors. In all areas, the numbers are growing and visible progress has been made. We believe that our honest and committed work and our desire to contribute to the development of Ogulin in all fields has been recognised and that this is the only reason for our victory, and at the same time the foundation for our further activities and plans,'' said Mayor Dalibor Domitrović.
The figures speak volumes about what was done, how it was done, and the level of effort involved. Over the last year and a half in Ogulin, an impressive 250 new employment positions were opened, thanks to a large investment cycle that kick-started the economy.
Domitrović and his team succeeded in solving several property related legal problems that had been blocking investors and their cash, and because of which the new Ogulin entrepreneurial zone sadly became obsolete. The area is now fully completed and ready, and now Ogulin has requested an additional 47 hectares of land from the state, because the interest of potential investors certainly hasn't gone away.
"In the old and in the new entrepreneurial zone, investment projects worth 1.25 billion kuna exist, which, in addition to other projects, in the coming years, could turn Ogulin into a large construction site where more companies from the Ogulin area will have the opportunity to earn money,'' Deputy Mayor Danijel Vukelj said.
Since the beginning of their mandate, they have managed to launch two large projects that had been deadlocked for decades - the Ogulin flood defense system, that is, the construction of Ogulin's retention system, a project worth 180 million kuna and which is led by Hrvatske vode (Croatian water), and the construction of the Ogulin observatory project worth 250 million kuna, run by Hrvatske ceste (Croatian roads), which is dealing with major traffic problems that hinder the development of entrepreneurial zones and thus the local economy of Ogulin. Both projects will be funded by very welcome EU funds.
As far as Ogulin is concerned, or more specificially its administration, currently, projects worth 272 million kuna are in the works, for which EU funds have been contracted. Projects worth 80 million kuna have been either reported or are being prepared.
"We've started dealing with the issue of waste management, which has been neglected for many years now across Croatia and in the majority of cities and municipalities. We can do a lot of things in a very short time to meet the EU conditions that the Republic of Croatia has now accepted. The establishment of a waste management system will cost 40 million kuna. Most of this amount will be financed by EU funds, but the implementation itself, from sorting out the Sodol landfill, construction, the recycling yard, the equipment and vehicle procurement, as well as citizen education and other activities, will last several years,'' Vukelj explained.
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Click here for the original article by Gradonacelnik.hr on Novac/Jutarnji
At the start of the enfeebled Uljanik's bigger problems, the Croatian Government's view was either restructuring or bankruptcy, and now there's no time to devise any sort of new solution.
As Marija Brnic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 28th of March, 2019, the government rejected the offer of strategic partner Brodosplit for Uljanik's restructuring, and thus, although the prime minister tried to avoid actually saying it, a process that would have a domino effect on all the companies operating within the Pula-based group system was launched.
The fact that there is no longer a strategic partner for Uljanik, which was the main argument for the postponement of the opening of bankruptcy proceedings in the previous proceedings on the 3 Maj shipyard and Uljanik's other companies, is changing the situation and it is now clear that no matter how much room the government initially left for some possible new solutions, the judge in Pazin doesn't have much of a choice today and will determine that the conditions for declaring bankruptcy for the Uljanik shipyard are now fulfilled. Such a decision automatically withdraws what the Rijeka court stated and opens bankruptcy proceedings for the 3 Maj shipyard.
All the speculations that there could be another possibility for Uljanik, for which Prime Minister Andrej Plenković left space in his statement, are empty stories, not only because of the fact that right at the very beginning of Uljanik's growing woes, the government's position was that the only possible scenarios for Uljanik's rescue were restructuring or bankruptcy, but also because of the fact that now, there is definitely no more time available to come up with a new solution for the burdened shipyard. When it comes to the question of the possibility of the continuation of shipbuilding in Pula and Rijeka as a whole, the key question remains the same - how many ships could buyers actually be found for, and then arrive other questions regarding financing through bankruptcy.
Two ships that are now in their final stages of construction in Pula were de facto detained over the past few days by the company's emotionally exhausted employees, and Uljanik's workers aren't finishing the job, because "other" workers, not from that shipyard, are working on Scenic's polar cruiser, while Jan de Nul is awaiting the government's decision to pay the requested difference of 22 million euros and to take over and finish it in Trieste, Italy.
From Pula, the request was for the completion of construction to be carried out in Uljanik, but the government didn't even discuss that yesterday, so it remains unknown as to whether the Ministry of Finance has worked to meet the necessary conditions, and if so, when it intends to pay any price differences and deal with the issue of the contracted vessels.
Although it's quite impossible to describe the situation surrounding Uljanik and Croatian shipbuilding as a whole as anything remotely positive, its rather lucky, analysts agree, that all of this happened and seems to have finally reached its peak in a year in which a surplus was recorded, but that doesn't minimise the issues Uljanik faces, nor does it even begin to confront the shipyard's overworked and well and truly underpaid employees.
The interesting thing which always happens in Croatia is the intertwining of business and politics. Just like with the messy Agrokor situation that has dominated the Croatian media for the past couple of years, there is always a political element, and if there isn't really one, someone will make you believe there is. The Istrian Democratic Party (IDS) has accused the Croatian Government of purposely trying to cause issues by using the Uljanik saga to its benefit, even claiming that the ''government's lack of action and indecisiveness'' is an attempt to destabilise Istria.
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Click here for the original article by Marija Brnic for Poslovni Dnevnik