November the 18th, 2021 - The Novigrad hotel Aminess Maestral is set to get a welcome 35 million kuna cash injection, and special emphasis is being placed on one particular area.

As Marija Crnjak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the well known Aminess tourist company has started the reconstruction of the accommodation part of the Novigrad hotel Aminess Maestral in Novigrad, Istria. This is an investment worth a massive 35 million kuna, and this reconstruction will finish off and complete the entire new renovation of the four-star Novigrad hotel Aminess Maestral, the opening of which is expected during the spring of 2022, with hopes for yet another fantastic tourist season that summer.

With this large investment, Aminess is completely re-doing the three hundred rooms and bathrooms of the Novigrad hotel Aminess Maestral, and special attention will be paid to the modern design and decoration of the complex, for which architect Visen Slamar from the renowned Porec-based architectural studio Tissa was hired, the company reported.

In addition to raising the overall quality of service and customer experience of staying at this particular Istrian hotel in a very popular holiday destination for Croatia's residents and foreign visitors alike, the long-term goal of this renovation is to extend the season of the Aminess Maestral facilities to cover the whole year.

Given the hotel's rich offer of a range of family, wellness and sports facilities, the hotel's operational period could stretch quite easily long beyond the classic three hottest months of the summer season, which Croatia has unfortunately limited itself to despite an array of content which would attract all sorts of visitors from across the world outside of the main tourist season.

In addition to investing in hotel rooms, Aminess plans to invest additional funds in raising the quality of this hotel next year as well.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated business section.

October the 31st, 2021 - The well known Adris Group is set to invest a large sum into the renovation of several Zagreb hotels, as well as into the famous Hotel Marjan down in the City of Split.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes, the Adris Group's net profit reached a massive 605 million kuna in the first nine months of this year, compared to a considerably lower figure of 141 million kuna last year, and total revenues rose to 4.51 billion kuna (marking a significant increase of 23 percent), they announced from Adris.

At the same time, the income from the sale of goods and services increased by a quarter, reaching a staggering 4.18 billion kuna. Consolidated profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) also stands at 1.065 billion kuna, three percent below the pre-crisis levels of 2019. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to leave its traces on the results of the tourism business, Maistra, although a recovery was recorded in the main part of this year's main tourist season which is promising.

The company recorded 1.2 billion kuna in revenue from sales of goods and services, 79 percent of the figure recorded from back in 2019. EBITDA stood at 602 million kuna, reaching 85 percent of what was realised before the global pandemic struck, as well as net profit 360 million kuna in total. The Istrian part of the tourism business accounted for 86 percent of sales realised back in 2019, Zagreb hotels reached 36 percent of the same, and those down in Dubrovnik reached 44 percent of 2019's results.

Adris has also recently announced 200 million kuna in investments this year, with the continuation of preparations for the renovation projects of Zagreb hotels and the Marjan Hotel down on the coast in Split.

Croatia osiguranje's net profit amounted to 320 million kuna, 9 percent more on an annual basis, with 2.27 billion kuna of total gross premiums written in Croatia (a marked increase of 5 percent).

Cromaris' EBITDA profit also jumped up by more than a quarter, reaching 52 million kuna, while the net result was 12.3 million kuna.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

October the 12th, 2021 - American-Croatian entrepreneur Boris Miksic has made an enormous seven million euro investment, and although the Croatian public still thinks of him in a political light, there's much more to this businessman than many notice, unless you're from Slavonia...

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Sergej Novosel Vuckovic writes, a very long time has passed since businessman Boris Miksic was a rival to politicians Stjepan Mesic and Jadranka Kosor back in the 2005 presidential election, becoming a sensation in the number of votes won, behind these two the third of thirteen candidates, but even today this episode seems to be the first association with him the public has.

For many people, on the other hand, in Eastern Croatia, he was and remains above all, an entrepreneur, innovator, and an employer, which he became known as with the beginning of his business development in Croatia way back in the early 2000s.

In Beli Manastir, Boris Miksic has had a Ecocortec polymer processing plant for about fifteen years now, which boasts anti-corrosion protection technology, which he patented in 1977 over in the USA in the Cortec Group. At the end of the year, the construction of a new factory in the Business Zone of Beli Manastir is now set begin. Boris Miksic's own investment stands at more than seven million euros.

''As part of the new factory (which will stand on land covering 5,000 square metres, with the hall spanning 2000 square metres itself), there will be a modern line for recycling plastic packaging and a plastic processing plant for further extrusion in our existing factory and in the factories of our partners in Japan, Turkey, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. Another three-layer extrusion line will also be installed in the existing hall and a new line for making plastic bags intended for industrial packaging will be there,'' explained the businessman.

Raw materials from renewable sources

After the construction of the plant in the Ecocortec production and logistics complex, about a hundred people will work there. According to Boris Miksic, Beli Manastir will be the largest factory with such an assortment in all of Europe and the second in the entire world, after the American Cortecs. It should be operational by the end of 2022 if there are no major delays in the supply chain. So far, Miksic has invested more than 20 million euros in the Republic of Croatia.

The entire Cortec Group is, by the way, still the world's largest manufacturer of so-called VCI packaging (which protects against corrosion) sold in hundreds of countries worldwide, and among the clients are some major players in the automotive and electronics industry (such as Mercedes, Toyota, Ford, Bosch, IBM, GE, Airbus, ExxonMobil, and Croatia's very own Koncar).

"With a new range of patented products based on raw materials from renewable sources, such as PLA plastics, we're positioned as leaders in the circular economy," added Boris Miksic.

The need for anti-corrosion protection didn't abate even during the coronavirus pandemic, on the contrary, business results last year and so far in 2021 were, according to Miksic, solid, and "in Croatia, they were above expectations". Revenues in 2020, according to Poslovna Hrvatska (Business Croatia), amounted to close to 50 million kuna, with profits soaring to an impressive 5.78 million kuna.

"Ecocortec had sales growth of 25 percent, which is just proof that my investment in my homeland was well thought of and even better performed thanks to excellent management teams and the dedicated work of all employees," said Boris Miksic. 90 percent of everything done in Slavonia is exported - to the EU, USA, China, Indonesia, Turkey, and Russia. Due to the lockdowns of 2020, the supply was somewhat disrupted, but more than 98 percent of the deliveries to customers was still carried out properly and on time.

"Our competitive advantage is vertical integration, so we didn't really have any delays," added Boris Miksic.

Recently, he further strengthened his position, his company Cortecros took over the Crosca/INA logistics centre in Kastel Sucurac in Dalmatia. They have been using this facility since way back in 1998 but now it is completely theirs and they have some very ambitious plans for it.

"Over the past few years, we've started the production of ecological anti-corrosion products for the market of Southeastern Europe, which we're expanding to the EU, Russia and the Middle East, thus doubling our capacities,"  Miksic announced.

Although he has very much distanced himself from the often murky world of Croatian politics, at least actively, when asked about the assessment of the entrepreneurial climate in Croatia in relation to what he found upon arriving here, the owner of Ecocortec recalls the motto of his political activity: ''when the economy breathes, society flourishes''. He added that he'd like to see Croatia dragged up from being at the very bottom of the EU in many cases.

''I've always had a vision of Croatia as an ecological oasis in the heart of Europe,'' concluded Boris Miksic.

For more, follow our business section.

October the 10th, 2021 - A brand new Pula shopping centre looks to be on the horizon through an enormous investment totalling a massive 130 million kuna.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, judging by the ambitious announcements and plans that have been seen so far, the gorgeous Istrian city of Pula could get another shopping centre instead of a dilapidated department store in the city centre - Pula Mall.

A devastated, neglected, once attractive building in the centre, right next to the green market, could soon return to its old glory in a new, even better edition as another Pula shopping centre finally looms. This was announced at the last session of the City Council by Mayor Filip Zoricic, in which it was said that this large project would soon begin to be realised. He touched on the situation with the market itself at the Council, saying that it doesn't look good, and that it seems ridiculous as Pula boasts one of the most beautiful Art Nouveau buildings in the entire Mediterranean, which dates from the beginning of the 20th century.

The wish of Pula's city administration is to bring this dilapidated old building back to life, following the example of Florence in neighbouring Italy, so they plan to revitalise it with additional gastronomic offers and other content, Glas Istre writes.

Zoricic also pointed out the need to arrange locations on both sides of the market, and in that context he also mentioned the potential new Pula shopping centre/department store.

''We're going to talk to the employers, make a plan and see how we might solve the appearance and condition of our main market, and that this is accompanied by the renovation of the department store,'' said Zoricic. In a conversation with the owner's representative, they agreed to clean up the area in November, and the new Pula shopping centre, he said, would get not only a new car park, but also a slow food restaurant, two shops from well-known brands and more. “It’s a unique space, the very heart of the city and it needs to look nicer than it does today,” he said.

This was confirmed in a telephone conversation by Predrag Djordjevic, the project manager, who said that the building is owned by the Luxembourg project company Istria Real Estate, which in turn is owned by the British York Capital. Djordjevic is very optimistic when it comes to the realisation of this ambitious project. If everything goes according to plan, it will be part of the urban renewal of the city, which, according to the idea of ​​the Mayor of Pula, should finally breathe some life back into the otherwise somewhat overlooked centre.

The interlocutor confirmed to them that there will be a new car park with 150 spaces in the basement of the new Pula shopping centre. He also provided a visualisation of the future, renovated building, which has already been named - Pula Mall. He says that this is a project in which as much as 130 million kuna will be invested.

For more, check out our business section.

September the 13th, 2021 - An 87 million kuna renovation for the Podravka office building is set to take place, with a company from the continental Croatian town of Krizevci being ''the chosen ones'' for the job.

As Novac/Vedran Marjanovic writes, Podravka's Supervisory Board approved the Management Board's decision to invest a massive 87.7 million kuna in the renovation of the company's office building, and to conclude a contract with the construction company Radnik (Worker) from Krizevci for the job, the much loved Koprivnica-based company announced yesterday.

The renovation of the Podravka office building includes IT and energy reconstruction, as well as its modernisation. The current Podravka office building was built back in 1979 and hasn't been renovated for practically 42 years.

With this, the reconstruction project, which has been being planned for many years now, has entered the implementation phase, and includes a seven-storey office building, a restaurant, a car park and the surrounding area, Podravka announced, adding that the works will begin on October the 1st this year and will be completed in July 2022.

During this time, according to the announcement of the Koprivnica company, employees whose workplace is in the Podravka office building will be relocated to other locations in the company.

Podravka pointed out that the renovation of the company's office building will be financed from its own sources, without any borrowing involved. They added that the renovation of the Podravka office building is being done in its existing dimensions and that the investment framework is appropriate for a challenging business year with careful cost management.

When it comes to the selection of Radnik d.d. from Krizevci as the contractor, Podravka revealed that three rounds of collecting bids from contractors were conducted and that the selection was based on the project of renovation of the office building prepared by the company Forma-Biro, also from Koprivnica.

The amount of the investment in the renovation of the Podravka office building refers to construction works, the mechanical installations, works on the facade and those on the electrical installations, according to the Koprivnica company, noting that the renovation project incorporates elements of material artistic value of the building.

The reconstruction of the office building, Podravka noted, will improve the company's energy efficiency, corporate and information security and ensure that the new requirements of the prescribed standards are met in the time after the coronavirus pandemic.

For more, follow our business section.

July the 8th, 2021 - The Croatian Smart Bee concept, designed by an engineer from Samobor, has attracted the attention of the Chinese who have decided to invest 50,000 euros in it.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes, the best innovation of the Agro Arca 2021 fair is the unique Croatian Smart Bee Scale - Smart Bee, by Matija Hrzic. This electrical engineer from Samobor is on the verge of the commercialisation of Smart Bee.

27-year-old Hrzic began with Smart Bee's initial development through several phases back in 2016, while the start of production is expected by the end of the year. According to Hrzic, this will mean the production of the first Croatian smart beekeeping scale with advanced technologies integrated, within the framework of cooperation with a Chinese partner, which would be finalised in Croatia. An investment of around 50,000 euros is planned for the start.

Here on the Croatian market, no one produces electronic boards or measuring cells for beekeeping, while China as a mega power in this specialised niche is a logical choice for cooperation, because the price competitiveness of innovative scales can be readily achieved. The goal is to first cover the needs of Croatia and the immediate region, but as the production and sales price is many times lower, and with the fact that before the pandemic there were close to half a million active beekeepers across Europe, he believes that there are great opportunities for growth on the European market.

The mentor on the Smart Bee project, interestingly, is teacher Ivan Vlainic from the Secondary Vocational School in Samobor, a lecturer and mentor of Mate Rimac in the past, who accompanied him to numerous competitions. The most important thing in everything, Vlanic points out, is that talents are recognised as early as possible, as much as possible through competitions for technical schools, and that people who harbour such talents are able enter the world of innovation as early as possible.

As for Hrzic, Smart Bee is his first innovation with which he went to competitions, and the idea arrived to his mind at home, under the influence of his father Hrzic who is a beekeeper and who noticed some shortcomings with the process. Hrzic explained that the main problem in using the equipment that is already out there on the market concerns the price and life of the batteries.

Using the ratiometric ratio used with Smart Bee, according to him, a benefit is achieved because three times lower battery voltage is required for the same measurement accuracy, which means that you don't have to use 3 batteries but instead only one. These are only the first savings, and by using advanced versions of microcontrollers, the energy efficiency of the system is achieved, which, he says, leads to a cheap product with great application in beekeeping. This is especially true of so-called mobile beekeeping which is based on hive transport.

Mobile apiaries are becoming more prevalent in general, as the season from April to September, depending on the temperature, includes different types of bee food sources which is why hives are transported to locations with plenty of food available, from acacia and chestnut forests to lavender and oilseed rape fields.

Why is beekeeping necessary?

The first thing Hrzic mentions in answer to this query are climate changes that result in unstable weather conditions, so there is an explicit need for scales because they allow the beekeeper to know the moment when to feed the bees, not to have the honey from them consumed, or move them to another location.

According to him, bees can eat about 40 kilograms of honey a day per hundred hives in this sensitive period, so the answer is an innovative scale: a beekeeper from his home, via a mobile or web application, even via SMS by mobile phone, gets an insight in the condition of the apiary. That is done not only in terms of nectar and pollen intake, but also in terms of the temperature in the hive, the monitoring of which can prevent bee swarming or death, in addition to monitoring the health of the queen.

The plan for Smart Bee as time goes on is to place a temperature sensor in each hive, which sends data to the central unit in the scale using Bluetooth technology. Smart Bee, concluded Hrzic, also enables the detection of hives overturning, as well as problems caused by wild animals such as hungry bears.

For more, follow Made in Croatia.

June 1, 2021 – Investments in the yearly maintenance of Croatian motorways are sizeable, but justified when compared to the revenue generated, particularly during the summer season.

Croatian motorways are a crucial part of Croatia’s tourism infrastructure. They are also a very important factor in connecting various regions of the country. The topography of Croatia often makes local roads inefficient. Year after year majority of guests coming to Croatia with cars have very positive comments on the motorway system. However, the entire thing doesn’t come cheap.

With the constant need for maintenance and updating, Hrvatske Autoceste (Croatian Motorways Ltd - HAC) is hard at work every year to prepare the infrastructure for the summer season. The surge of cars on Croatian roads will once again happen in a year, starting in June. Index.hr reports Croatian Motorways Ltd invested 404.9 million kn (around 54 million EUR) into this year’s maintenance and upgrading of the motorway system. Much of this money has been invested in rest stops along the motorways. This is one part of the investment travellers to Croatia will immediately feel. Upgrades made in rest stops are mostly in interiors, bathrooms, and operational technology. HAC also notes the emergency services are going to be reinforced.

New and Updated Services

Along with the standard 24/7 road assistance patrolling the motorways, additional contractors will provide more complex roadside and system maintenance services. Teams of emergency medical services and over thirty vehicles with automatic defibrillators will be on hand as well. Much like the majority of other businesses, HAC expects higher revenues in 2021 than the previous year. In 2020 the numbers were very low due to COVID19 pandemic restrictions. Because of this, HAC started this year with around a hundred employees less than 2020. Estimated revenue from motorway tolls in Croatia this year is 2,18 billion kn (around 290 million EUR).

For more on travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

April the 27th, 2021 - When it comes to Croatian startup investments, things have been going excellently in the first three months of 2021 despite the ongoing coronavirus crisis and all of the economic woes it brings with it.

As Bernard Ivezic/Novac writes, In the first quarter of 2021, Croatian startup investments reached more than one billion kuna in total, as was stated in the analysis of Novac.hr.

Although the figure stands at more than 170 million US dollars, it isn't a total amount because the value of some major transactions hasn't yet been made public. Some examples of figures that aren't yet known include the numbers behind Ispsos' purchase of the most successful Croatian marketing startup, DotMetrics, Infobip's acquisition of Shift, as well as the value of M + Group's investment in the domestic startup Bulb. The latter is speculated to be at the level of seven million euros.

Frane Sesnic, the director of ZICER, says that it was only a matter of time before the achievements of the Croatian startup scene would come to light.

''All of those results come after long and persistent investments, knowledge, time and money, and these aren't merely overnight successes. This is just the beginning of a new stage of Croatian entrepreneurship based on knowledge, which is proving to be successful and globally competitive,'' he stated.

The largest startup investment in the first quarter was of course Porsche's 70m-euro investment in Rimac Automobili. The market value of Mate Rimac's company has since jumped to a massive 978.5 million US dollars and it is certain that by the end of the year it will achieve its so-called unicorn valuation, ie a market value of more than a billion US dollars.

The second largest of the Croatian startup investments in the first quarter of 2021 was the 250 million kuna exit of one of the largest mobile application manufacturers in Croatia, Zagreb's Five. It was taken over by the British company Endava and is the second largest startup exit in Croatia so far, just behind Nanobit.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In third place is Photomath’s 23 million US dollar investment round. A VC fund from no less than the Silicon Valley, Menlo Ventures, has invested in the startup, which was started by Damir Sabol and which boasted that its artificial intelligence is used by a million people a day. The Croatian-British startup Cognism is the fourth largest investment in the quarter, it received 12.5 million dollars from Swisscom Ventures, the VC fund of the largest telecom of the same name in Switzerland.

It's worth mentioning that Cognism, which has developed a cloud system that allows companies to use Internet technologies to improve sales and marketing, is one of the fastest growing companies in the investment portfolio of South Central Ventures.

Vedran Blagus, an investment manager at South Central Ventures, says that given the fact that startups have been building their story globally for more than a decade now, it isn't unusual to see their apparent “overnight success” now.

''If we go back only a year or two, activities on the Croatian startup or technology scene were sporadic, at least in terms of their size and the amount of investments and acquisitions which took place, now they've placed Croatia on the map for large foreign investors and partnerships in terms of acquisitions and investments,'' said Blagus.

Green technologies

It is also worth mentioning that M12, Microsoft's VC fund, invested 12.5 million dollars in Memgraph, a Croatian startup with whose technology another Facebook can be created.

Of the Croatian startup investments that exceed eye-watering amounts, there is also the investment of 10 million kuna received by the Osijek startup Orqa from the Hungarian fund Day One Capital, as well as smaller investments in various startups. The startup ecosystem in Croatia has become richer for the BIRD Incubator, the first to specialise in artificial intelligence startups. SPOCK, the incubator of the largest technological faculty in Croatia, Zagreb's FER, was reactivated, and ZICER, the largest startup hub in our country, showed the results of as many as eight local green startups.

In addition, the American analytical company ABI Research named Gideon Brothers the fifth most successful manufacturer of autonomous robots for the transfer of cargo in the world, and the largest VC fund in Croatia, Fil Rouge Capital, was named the second most active such fund in Central and Eastern Europe.

For more on Croatian startup investments and domestic companies, make sure to follow Made in Croatia.

January the 7th, 2021 - The recent Petrinja earthquake rounded off an absolutely horrendous 2020 for Croatia which was dominated by a global pandemic. Investments in Sisak-Moslavina County, some of them very pressing, have now had keys placed in their locks.

As Vedran Marjanovic/Novac writes, the catastrophic Petrinja earthquake stopped investments in their very tracks in the affected areas of Sisak-Moslavina County. This includes those co-financed from European Union funds carrying a total value, according to local leaders, of close to one billion kuna.

One of the largest ongoing EU projects in the Banovina region is, for example, the improvement of the water and communal infrastructure of the Petrinja agglomeration which is co-financed by the European Union from the Cohesion Fund, worth 431 million kuna, and as the Minister of Economy and Environment Tomislav Coric stated that the Petrinja water supply system was damaged in the earthquake in about a hundred places, the question is whether Petrinja can request additional EU assistance to repair the damage to the agglomeration and complete the project?

Brussels isn't the right address

''The European Union, ie the European institutions based in Brussels, aren't a direct address to which the beneficiaries of EU funds in earthquake-affected areas can now turn in an attempt to gain financial assistance for the repairing of damage, nor are they the right doors to knock on to request assistance to complete such projects if they are not completed yet. The Croatian state, ie the bodies in the management and control systems of the European Structural and Investment Funds are the places to go. Such are the corresponding rules and procedures,'' said Ariana Vela, the director of the consulting company Avelant and the president of the Board of the EU Projects School. She noted that the rights and obligations of beneficiaries of EU funds in the event of force majeure, such as earthquakes, are regulated by grant agreements, although, in her view, not to a sufficient extent.

''Therefore, it would be best for the competent authorities, in cooperation with the beneficiaries, to first determine the damage caused to EU projects that are in progress and, if they have sufficient funds in their budgets, to finance the repair of the damage and bring those projects to their pre-earthquake condition, and the compensation of these funds in terms of sources of funding can be requested from the EU Solidarity Fund, in compliance with certain rules and meeting certain preconditions,'' she pointed out.

In the case of the Petrinja agglomeration, the project holder is the city utility company Privreda d.o.o. which, back in 2016, signed a contract with the Ministry of Agriculture and Croatian Waters, and was provided co-financing from the European Union worth 245 million kuna. The state participates in the project with 100 million kuna, Croatian Waters with 44 million kuna, and the rest is dealt with by the city utility company.

The Petrinja agglomeration project, which was supposed to renovate the water supply network in order to, among other things, reduce water losses in it and build a wastewater collection and treatment system, was set to be completed this year. According to available information, even if the Petrinja earthquake had not occurred, the big question is whether the Petrinja agglomeration project would be completed by the end of next year anyway.

Extra money

In any case, having in mind the propositions that Ariana Vela drew our attention to, the state and Croatian Waters will probably have to engage significant additional money in order to complete the Petrinja agglomeration project.

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Thanks to a good pre-crisis initial capitalisation, Croatia's banks have enough potential to continue to provide all the services they have provided so far, but should future EU cash injections go to the Croatian private sector for investments?

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 3rd of January, 2021, although the second wave of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is now at its peak, announcements of an effective vaccine and the expected natural calming down of the spread of infection with the arrival of spring 2021 gives us hope that all of those promises of domestic economic recovery will come true. At the same time, what's more important than that growth itself is what the quality of the recovery will be, how long it will last for, and for those at HUB, the most important thing is to analyse what the role of banks could be in that saga.

Owing to a good pre-crisis initial capitalisation, banks have enough potential to continue to provide all the services they have provided so far. This potential can be applied equally to liquidity and available capital. Good projects, as well as the needs of people who will regularly repay their obligations will be financed at the lowest interest rates in Croatia's history. How can we ensure that the start of Croatia's economic recovery in 2021 and the availability of funds at a very low cost of capital turn into lasting recovery at high growth rates? The answer depends on how the country uses European Union (EU) funds.

It is of the utmost importance to use those funds so that as much as possible falls into the hands of the Croatian private sector, more precisely the corporate sector, in order to increase investment. Banks are ready to support such projects, because investments accompanied by favourable financial structuring strengthen the sense of trust in clients and this improves their creditworthiness in general in the long run.

An important part of European Union funds is that which is used for various financial instruments. This is of great importance when it comes to the very structure financial instruments so that they don't crowd out the market but instead complement and improve it, in two ways. First of all, the improvement of the framework for resolving insolvency and the development of capital markets, especially venture capital funds, is imposed as a necessity to increase the economic dynamics on the way out of this terrible and unprecedented crisis. It is good that these measures are mentioned in the National Development Strategy 2030 and are in the recommendations of the EU Council to Croatia, so the implementation of these measures can now be readily expected.

Second of all, when it comes to debt instruments, the trend of sectoral and earmarked fragmentation of credit guarantee schemes needs to be reversed. The guarantee schemes of HBOR and HAMAG-BICRO, which are financed from EU funds, should be simplified, reduced in their numbers and made more flexible and transparent according to the needs of the market. This will encourage risk-taking that wouldn't have been taken without government intervention, which directly increases investment and economic growth.

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