August the 17th, 2021 - The number of Croatian registered trades has reached the levels we saw back in the otherwise crisis dominated year of 2008, but there have been some distinct alterations in terms of structure.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, despite the fact that many trades and crafts are disappearing across the Republic of Croatia, the total number of entrepreneurs operating through Croatian registered trades and other more liberal professions has been increasing during the last year, and in the second quarter of 2021, the number of Croatian registered trades exceeded 90,000, and the last time that figure was recorded was eight years ago.

Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics shows that at the end of June 2021, there were 90.3 thousand active Croatian registered trades, and the increase is visible not only on a quarterly but also annual basis, with the number of registered trades being on the rise during the coronavirus pandemic.

However, if we compare the figures from this year and those from back in June 2013, we can see some interesting changes in the sectoral structure of crafts and liberal professions. More precisely, there has been a complete reversal in the structure of activities of Croatian registered trades.

Eight years ago, the dominant enterprises were in trade, of which there were 12.5 thousand at the time, but now there are three thousand fewer in the records. There are about as many trades in the accommodation and catering sector, once the second sector in terms of the number of trades, which at the end of June this year stood at just over 8,000.

This decline in the case of trade and tourism hasn't been caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it has been going on for a long time now, and although the public perception is that the number of construction trades in Croatia is booming, this activity hasn't taken the leading position in this case.

Big changes

Namely, professional, scientific and technical activities became the most important, in which, according to the latest data, a total of 12.8 thousand Croatian registered trades were registered, as much as 4.2 thousand more than eight years ago. The second in number are trades in the so-called ''other service'' economic activities, which mainly includes classic craft repairs, hairdressing and similar services.

Their number has now almost reached 11 thousand, which is almost two thousand more than eight years ago. A big change can be noticed in the activity of information and communication, in which the number of registered trades has almost tripled and reached 3.4 thousand.

If you look at the indicators of crafts by county, there have been no dramatic changes in those eight years, it is only noticeable that there are even more such trades in the capital, because Zagreb now has 17.8 thousand trades, which is an increase of about a thousand and a half, and a more visible decrease in turnover has been recorded only in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, by about 500.

The question of labour...

The positive trend in the number of Croatian registered trades is not yet followed by the number of employees working for these businesses. At the end of the second quarter of this year, that figure was slightly higher than 205 thousand, which is almost 11 thousand more than in 2020, in which trade owners also used government measures to help preserve jobs. However, this number is even lower than it was in previous years, during which, after all, there was a slightly smaller number of registered and active trades.

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The Croatian Employers' Association (HUP) has welcomed changes to the Law on Companies and has urged that no new burdensome regulations be introduced.

As Ana Blaskovic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of April, 2019, recent changes to the Law on Companies, which simplifies the establishment and the liquidation of companies, will enable entrepreneurs to be more competitive and help Croatia to climb up and improve its place on lists such as that of the World Bank, Doing Business, on which Croatia occupies 68th position out of 140 countries worldwide. 

The Croatian Employers' Association (HUP) has openly welcomed these positive changes, but has warned that this step in the right direction should not end up with people simply becoming lost once again but this time in a maze of new obstacles.

"The Croatian Employers' Association welcomes the simplification of procedures related either to the establishment of companies or to their liquidation, and we expect the introduction of changes that will stimulate the competitiveness of the Croatian economy and make it easier to monitor rapid changes on the global market," stated Admira Ribičić, the director of legislation and legal affairs at the Croatian Employers' Association which itself proposed changes in the same direction.

Better competitiveness should bring forward the ability to establish a simple and ''normal'' d.o.o. online, just with the payment of court fees, and without the cost of a public notary. The changes to the law open the doors for faster and easier business/company registration. However, even though e-foundation has now come into effect, the application that will enable it to function correctly will only come into force in September.

The Croatian Employers' Association has also readily welcomed the removal of the stipulation of reserving a company name, the shortening of the deadline for the court to make a decision on registration in the court registry from fifteen to five working days, as well as the provisions for the simpler and cheaper liquidation of a company, simply with a statement proving the non-existence of any debts.

"What worries us most is that we don't end up with a situation in which we remove a whole host of regulations and end up accidentally replacing them with different ones through changing the regulations. In Croatia, there are between 300 and 400 new regulations introduced annually, or amendments to existing ones, and each of them "laments" the danger of introducing a new administrative or financial burden,'' Ribičić concluded.

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Click here for the original article by Ana Blaskovic for Poslovni Dnevnik