ZAGREB, 25 Nov 2021 - State secretary at the Ministry of Transport, Tomislav Mihotić, confirmed in parliament on Thursday that electronic toll collection (ETC) would be introduced throughout Croatia, and the intention is for the system to be unified in the entire European Union.

In the end, there will be no toll booths on the motorway, Mihotić said in response to Marina Opačak Bilić's (Social Democrats Group) question of whether modernizing the ETC was considered, like in some other countries.

Presenting the amendments to the roads act, the state secretary said their goal was to ensure free passage through all places which today had toll booths.

This means that vehicles will be registered in another way, by recording the licence plate of a vehicle, and then the ETC will automatically collect money, there will be no traffic jams or additional pollution that occurs at these locations, he said.

He added that the funds for introducing the ETC, HRK 500 million (€67 million), had been provided in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NPOO).

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August the 14th, 2021 - Croatian road toll fees are experiencing excellent numbers so far this summer, with this past weekend being far beyond anyone's expectations from just a few months ago. Numbers like those we saw and took entirely for granted back in pre-pandemic record year of 2019 which seemed unattainable this time last year are becoming more and more of a reality.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, Croatian Motorways is feeling the results of a truly excellent Croatian good tourist season so far in their business, which also recorded excellent results last weekend. From the 20th to the 22nd of August, 856.5 thousand vehicles passed at their toll booths and a massive 47.1 million kuna without VAT was collected in Croatian road toll fees.

When compared to the same weekend last year, when the turnover of 591.6 thousand vehicles and revenue of 31.5 million kuna in Croatian road toll fees was recorded, this figure marks a promising increase of 45 and 50 percent, respectively, and according to official HAC data, compared to the same weekend in In the pre-pandemic year of 2019, in which record results were also achieved, the number of vehicles this weekend was higher, but revenues were still slightly lower.

That weekend, two years ago, HAC recorded a turnover of 837.6 thousand cars and other vehicles, which means that last weekend the traffic was higher by 2 percent, and the state highways had a traffic of almost 19 thousand more vehicles.

However, Croatian road toll fees collected back then stood at about one percent higher, and on the same weekend in August in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, revenues amounted to 47.7 million kuna without VAT included.

The fact that with a larger number of vehicles there was no equal increase in revenue from freight, and it is slightly weaker, is partly a result of the fact that before the tourist season, as a government measure to attract tourists to come to Croatia, the so-called winter tariff, which is somewhat cheaper, remained in place for longer.

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