The tourist season is just around the corner, and with the employment paradox of there being too many jobs but not enough workers, yet there being too many works and not enough jobs continuing in Croatia, some traditional seasonal employers are staying one step ahead when it comes to their level of care for their seasonal staff, at least in Novigrad.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of May, 2019, the Aminess tourist company has started building a hotel solely for its employees in Novigrad, Istria. The new hotel for the company's staff, along with all of the necessary prerequisites for participating on the commercial market, will be ready for the 2020 summer season.

The location of the new employee hotel in Novigrad extends up to 2,500 square metres is just ten minutes from the farthest Aminess tourist facility, the closest location at which said staff are likely to be working during the tourist season.

They will have a reception desk, a common kitchen with a dining area, a parking area and a closed bicycle storage room. The new Novigrad hotel's rooms will mostly be double with private bathrooms and with French balconies or terraces, modern furnishings and TV, as well as a heating and cooling system. In addition to the hotel's free Wi-Fi access, employees will also be able to enjoy a shared lounge area, and specially equipped rooms for the washing, drying and ironing of clothes.

"Happy and satisfied employees are key to the company's success. Therefore, with the benefits we offer, we have decided to build a hotel for our employees in order to make them feel comfortable. This will enable all employees coming from other regions to have even better quality accommodation with numerous benefits on offer to them,'' stated Sanja Žužić, Aminess' Human Resource Manager.

Make sure to stay up to date by following our dedicated lifestyle and business pages for much more.

As VLM/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 20th of May, 2019, two respected Croatian newspapers, Večernji list and Poslovni dnevnik, in cooperation with the University of Zagreb and the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, are set to organise a round table entitled Future in Croatia and a ''time travelling'' exhibition through Večernji list's history.

After successful events already held in Osijek, Koprivnica, Rijeka, Zadar and Split, Zagreb will now play host to this national action launched by the Vecernji list group with the ultimate goal of retaining young educated people here in Croatia in the face of continuing and concerning negative demographic trends.

The event will be opened by Večernji list's Andrea Borošić, Prof. dr. sc. Lorena Škuflić and Prof. dr. sc. Damir Boras.

The Zagreb roundtable will discuss the vital importance of the retention of young and educated people here in the Republic of Croatia, and will be attended by numerous significant figures from across the spectrum of both politics and science in Croatia who have succeeded in standing out in their respective fields.

The first part of the program will conclude with the official opening of Večernji list's exhibition "We've been together for 60 years", which, through interesting and interactive content, will present the rich history of Croatia's media leader, along with an introductory speech from the curator.

At the very end of the program, an interactive forum will be held during which a student contest in writing projects will presented, and the present Večernji list group will reward the excellence of Croatian students.

Guests will be Podravka's dr. Sc. Jasmina Ranilović, PLIVA's Blagica Petrovac Šikić, UVI eSports d.o.o.'s Marko Komerički and the directors and founders of the company Hodajuće reklama Tino Vrbanović and Ante Starčević, who will present their encouraging and successful business ventures and projects which have been realised here in Croatia to all those gathered there.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business and lifestyle pages for much more. If it's just Zagreb and what's going on in the capital you're interested in, follow Total Zagreb or check out Zagreb in a Page.

Click here for the original article by VLM on Poslovni Dnevnik

Ever been browsing online mindlessly and come across a YouTube video showing how to create something and thought: Hang on, I could do that? One Croatian man from Kutina did exactly that and has thus decided to turn his hobby into a business, and if he had the time to pay attention solely to that, it would take off even faster than it has done already.

As Novac/Jasmina Trstenjak writes on the 28th of April, 2019, if we open our eyes a little bit, we'll see that there are ideas to start our own business all around us. Some of us stumble upon them, recognise them, and start from the idea itself, and some ideas literally come and find us and prevent us from bypassing them and remaining just as ideas.

Matija Kašner from the continental Croatian town of Kutina, who makes furniture from disposable pallets, says that in the case of his very own creation Sklepaj.me "everything began from itself, and quickly".

When my wife and I moved into this house, we didn't particularly like the furniture in the stores, and as I saw people doing innovative things from palets online, I decided to make a bed out of pallets and then a terrace. So then I decided to put what I'd made on Njuškalo (a Croatian buy and sell website) and try to sell it. One woman called me who wanted to equip her entire apartment house in Crikvenica with tables and chairs, and that was the first big job from which it all began,'' says Kašner.

He remembers thinking how big that job was and wondered whether or not he could manage to do it all in time. But, with the help of friends and even without the right tools - he succeeded. As his first client needed an invoice, he opened an obrt (small company) and officially turned his hobby into a job back at the end of 2013. Then, another project came for an IT company and that was great in the full sense of the word - he equipped the entire building.

The young IT team wanted something different, they ordered armchairs, beds because they had a "chill out" room, and the like. Sklepaj.me quickly started to grow bigger, and its initiator, an economist by profession, said the job would have grown at an even faster pace if he was only doing that.

Namely, Kašner comes from an entrepreneurial family, and given his business versatility, the entrepreneurial genes have obviously been passed down to him and, besides making furniture, he grows raspberries, rents out electric bikes and conducts tourist tours, is engaged in a family business, and addition to that, he's employed in a company in which he's the head of the branch.

''Sklepaj.me is just a hobby that in some way created itself and which I do after work. We don't live on that. We live from our wage,'' Kašner makes sure to confirm.

But, if he was engaged solely in this hobby, could he live from it? The idea with the pallets seems to be a great one. What's the real market potential? Where are the palets obtained? Is it an expensive hobby? How lucrative is it...? There are many questions.

''I'd expand the range and then yes, I then could live from it, but I'd have to exhibit at fairs, I'd have to be present in design spheres, etc. The order, or its quantity, depends on the revenue and sometimes that can be high only even with just one or two orders per year. Averages are difficult to come up with. There are no such rules. If I had to do three big orders per year for around 30,000 kuna, which is one nice cafe or hostel, I'd sign up tomorrow to do only that. That could provide for a decent life,'' Kašner says when discussing his innovative business that brought the strongest revenue in six years last year with only one project, which was his largest ever so far, for Zrće.

He also revealed that he's now negotiating orders that would be almost of the same size as that one. Namely, two shelves of furniture (60 armchairs, 30 tables, 60 bar tables...) were sent to Zrće, a project on which for two or three months, he worked intensively without any contact with the outside world for 10-12 hours per day.

When it comes to a series, everything depends on how many pieces someone orders, and so far he has already worked on tables, armchairs, deck chairs, bar stools and desks and even lamps. One armchair costs between 400 and 600 kuna, depending on whether they want a sponge putting on it or not, tables are about the same price, deck chairs are about 800-900 kuna, and the bar tables are of the same rank as deck chairs.

"I like to make sure the prices are acceptable, so when someone goes to the store and sees a rattan deck chair, he can see that for roughly the same money he can get something unique, and something that not many will have,''

He also mentions the seasonal rhythm of this job because someone who owns a tourist facility orders the furniture in the winter and then winter is spent working for the tourist season in summer. Then comes stagnation in June and July, and in August there are orders to arrange children's rooms, renovations for peoples houses and other similar things.

As Croatia's economic and demographic issues continue, there's a lot to be said for being creative and starting your own business to generate some income, even if it's just extra cash on the side, and this innovative and talented gentlemen from Kutina is the perfect example of exactly that mindset.

Make sure to follow our dedicated Made in Croatia and business pages for much more on Croatian companies, Croatian products and services and Croatian innovation.

Click here for the original article by Jasmina Trstenjak for Novac/Jutarnji

As Mirela Lilek/Novac writes on the 27th of April, 2019, Croatia's situation still isn't good: the country is continuing to ''produce'' graduates with the third lowest employment rate in the whole of the European Union, and as a result, taxpayers pay more and more money for them. According to new data from Brussels, based on a comparative survey of youth employment among Croats with diplomas earned in the last three years, a third of highly educated people aged between 20 to 34 in Croatia have no jobs. Only Italy and Greece are worse.

Of the 28 countries EU member states, Croatia ranked 26th with a 66 percent employability rate. Four positions above Croatia lies Romania, Bulgaria is six places above, and Slovakia is nine places above. Croatia's neighbour to the north, Slovenia, is eleven places above Croatia, Poland is thirteen places above (impressively right behind Ireland and Denmark), and the Czech Republic, with an 89.9 percent employability rate which has impressed the European Commission's experts - has risen to an enviable fourth place.

Malta is in first place in Europe as an employer of its graduates with diplomas, the employment rate of Maltese students stands at a very impressive 94.5 percent, even better than Germany, which boasts a rate of 90.9 percent, followed then by the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and then Austria. The EU average is on the rise, back in 2014 it stood at 76 percent and in 2018 it stood at 80.2 percent. Unfortunately, the Croats have been close to the bottom for years, more specifically for fifteen years, as it has a below-average rate of employability in relation to the EU. Of course, rather than attempt to fix the problem directly, the Croats are doing what the Croats always do - continuing to debate and argue over who is (more) to blame for such embarrassing conditions.

Economists see the issue as being that the Croats aren't adapting easily to the market, and that Croatia also has an old education system. At Croatia's universities, they argue that the key issue isn't Croatia's higher education institutions, but an underdeveloped labour market, low personal income, and demotivating working conditions. Experts from the European Commission have given a relatively simple answer: Investing in education will benefit everyone in Europe.

Let's see how they explain their theories in some of the country's universities, starting with the largest "producers" of graduates in the entire country, the Faculty of Philosophy and Economics in Zagreb.

''We're aware of the importance of linking study programs and labour market needs. In this regard, the Faculty of Economics makes an effort to make it easier for students to access the labour market by establishing multilateral cooperation with companies and respectable institutions that enable students to perform high-quality professional practices,'' stated Sanja Sever Mališ, who deals with strategic partnerships and projects at the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb. The basic message from this particular Zagreb university is that "they connect students and employers so their best students can find work even during their studies." Therefore, there is no concern for them.

On the other hand, Vesna Vlahović-Štetić, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, admits that Croatia's humiliating placement at the bottom of the employability scale of graduates is still something to be very concerned about and therefore the causes of that need to be looked at.

''I assume that part of the problem lies in insufficient development and the ability of the economy and the public sector to absorb newly graduated students. On the other hand, the question is how many colleges and higher education institutions meet the needs of society with their respective programs. At the state level, in some professions there's hyper-production, and in others there is a lack of experts. Additionally, study programs should be regularly updated and developed to meet not only society's needs but also predict what competences professionals will need in the future,'' the dean says.

Data obtained through the HKO project of the Faculty of Philosophy shows that the employability of their students in the year after graduation is 75 percent. They believe this is the result of "the excellent professional and generic competences of their graduates".

"We're convinced at the Faculty of Philosophy that the study programs need to be further improved, so we have just started the study reform process and I'm sure the future employability of our students will be even better," says the university's dean.

The rector of the University of Rijeka, Snježana Prijić Samaržija, doesn't want to run away from the fact that Croatia's universities do hold a share of the responsibility for this issue but, again, she's convinced that Croatia's higher education institutions are't the key cause of the problem, but the underdeveloped labour market definitely is.

Rijeka University has eleven faculties and four departments. On their official page, they point out that they are a modern European university and a centre of excellence within the region and beyond, and that they are responsible for the social and economic development of the community. Samardžija claims that she doesn't want to relate the worrying data on the high rate of unemployed with higher education, but that "it should be borne in mind that higher education is a better job-finding guarantee, such as landing a permanent position,"

"Of course, it's possible to say that the employment rate would be higher if universities, by some automation, increased their quotas for the job-type deficit and reduced those profiles for which the employment bureaus take care of. In that sense, people often say Croatia's institutions and their enrollment policies aren't adapted to the labour market. However, the situation isn't quite that simple.

For example, the market seeks shipbuilding engineers, we have shipbuilding studies and a corresponding quota at the University of Rijeka, but there's a fall in interest for those studies. We can understand the students' fears about the situation with Croatia's shipyards, but the fact is that the need for this profession is still growing. Similarly, despite the lack of mathematics and physics teachers and the excellent studies we have, the interest doesn't match the employment opportunities,'' she explained.

The University of Rijeka decided to put seven studies ''into retirement'' this year, and isn't accepting students for them. Those are acting and media, dental hygiene, computer science in combination with professional studies of medical-lab diagnostics, mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, and electrical engineering.

On the other hand, there's a considerable level of interest in studies that don't guarantee quick and permanent employment at all, such as the arts, cultural studies, and psychology.

''Young people choose studies according to their personal interests, not just employment opportunities. They don't necessarily just want a permanent job, many of them are accustomed to gaining work experience in different institutions, at different places of work, and in different countries. More and more, they prefer to individually define the curriculum through courses and practical competences beyond their study program(s), which will make their expertise comparatively more special and desirable. In the midst of a sluggish and non-ethnological labour market, more and more students enjoy prolonged youthful relationships with their parents or rent apartments,'' says Snježana Prijić Samaržija.

"I don't want to run away from the responsibility of the university, we're constantly thinking about the jobs of the future, we're working on increasing the quota for the deficit professions and improving our students' competences to reduce the unemployment rate. However, time is needed to see the results of these measures because the higher education cycle lasts for at least five years. It should be understood that universities can't just simply increase quotas for occupations for which there's a labour market need because new employment is frozen,'' noted the Rector of the University of Rijeka.

As Croatia's paradoxical situation of having no work but plenty of jobseekers, yet plenty of work and no staff, it's hard to predict the outcome of education system reforms as the market and its needs can alter so rapidly. Will Croatian students simply continue to trickle away on the stream of a proverbial leaking tap out into Western Europe, leaving Croatia with the rather unenviable title of a country that educates its citizens for work abroad? It's likely such a scenario will continue at least for the foreseeable future. Whether or not Croatia will manage to make the necessary alterations to fix that aforementioned ''leaky tap'' in time remains to be seen.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle, politics and business pages for much more.

Click here for the original article by Mirela Lilek for Novac/Jutarnji

Although the Croatian economic situation isn't the most promising one in the world and you’ll encounter and many young people are leaving the country in search of better future, not everything is as bad as the news might suggest.

Croatia is full of young, driven, educated and ambitious individuals who want to create something for themselves in their own country by founding startups.

On a very long list of successful Croatian startups, TalentLyft, is a name you should remember. It was recently recognised as the best Croatian startup by Global Startup Awards. EU-Startups, the leading online publication with a focus on startups in Europe, has also found TalentLyft to be the most promising Croatian startup you should look out for in 2019 and beyond.

Founded in 2015 in Zagreb by two developers, Mario Buntić and Nikola Biondić, TalentLyft is a startup that developed a recruiting software that modernises and simplifies the recruiting process, in other words, it is a recruiting tool that helps companies find, attract and hire the best talent. It offers both recruitment and marketing solutions to attract the best candidates, and an applicant tracking system to solve post-application problems such as effective candidate communication, a database with all the applicants and their profiles, candidate assessment kits and scorecards, and interview scheduling all in one place.

Today, TalentLyft boasts thirteen full time employees and is currently located at Technopark (venue for startups at Velesajam).

In a brief interview with Total Croatia News, they revealed that startup life in Croatia isn't easy. There are many barriers to overcome in order to enter the market and start a business, starting from bureaucratic conundrums to finding capital investors, which is difficult to do in this environment. There is not much support for small firms and startups, so you’re very much on your own. Instead of focusing on new, promising sectors such as IT, the Croatian Government still invests in outdated industries.

Times and job markets are changing, and so should their investments.

‘’There's always a solid chance that your product will fail,'' they say. The startup life is risky, challenging and uncertain and requires a lot of hard work, devotion, persistence and compromise. However, despite, or exactly because of that, working in a startup offers a unique chance for personal and professional skill development and career advancement. When you are a small startup, you need to deliver a game changing solution and product in order to compete with the big guys. The only way to do that is by having all of your employees constantly learn new things, experiment and innovate.

‘’Since TalentLyft is a small group, every employees’ opinion is important; changes are embraced rapidly making us more agile’’, they state.

They are also proud of the fact that they're working with latest technologies in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, emphasising the fact that their employees’ knowledge needs to be up to date and that you can lose good people if they’re stuck working with old technologies.

‘’Yes it’s the employees’ responsibility to keep learning, but it’s our responsibility to provide them with the tools necessary for that,'' they state from this Croatian startup.

They love the fact that they are a small team because it means there's a better connection: ‘’You know everyone by their name, you work hard together, you share your struggles and the laughs, and you get the chance to build something from the ground up.’’

The startup life is for those who embrace challenges, seek new ways of doing things, and question the status quo.

‘’When you manage to gather together a group of people like that, every day feels like an adventure and there is no challenge you can’t tackle in the end.’’

Let's hope we'll see more examples like this across Croatia in the near future.

Follow our dedicated business page for more information on Croatian startups, Croatian companies, products and services, and doing business and investing in Croatia.

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.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business page for much more on Croatian companies, doing business in Croatia, investing in Croatia and Croatian products and services.

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

Croatia's employment issues are somewhat perplexing to many, and although there has apparently been a massive drop in unemployment, there's only been a very slight jump in those registering as newly employed. The maths doesn't always really add up, but unfortunately the demographic picture of the country explains it all.

As Jadranka Dozan/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 10th of April, 2019, at this time of year, official data on employment levels tends to heavily reflect the huge levels of seasonality Croatia's labour market is affected by with every passing year, of course, this is primarily owing to the increased employment levels of seasonal workers before the start of the main tourist season in summer. The latest figures from HZMO (Croatian Pension Insurance Fund) from March show some growth in the number of insured persons, both on a monthly and an annual basis, with positive annual rates having continued to some degree or another since March 2015, while monthly growth began in only in February, according to analysts from Raiffeisen Bank (RBA).

Last month, the number of insured persons increased by 14,000, to a total of 1.52 million people, and it is realistic to expect that the number of insured persons will increase even more owing to the opening up of seasonal positions in preparation for the tourist season, an economic trend which could easily continue until September. When compared to March last year, the number of insured persons more than 32,000 or 2.2 percent higher.

Along with the pretty positive indicators from HZMO's labour market information, the Croatian Bureau of Statistic's labour force surveys are more in line with the process of the huge problem of the mass emigration of Croatia's fit, healthy, working-age population and the demographic of an aging general population. The latest survey, in which the last quarter of 2018 was included, indicates an annual drop in Croatia's working-age population from 3.54 to 3.52 million.

Those who are economically active in Croatia, whether they're already working or actively looking for a job, numbered just 1.8 million at the end of 2018, which is 42,000 people or 2.3 percent less than the year before. Despite the positive economic data, the activity rate dropped from 52 to 51 percent. Activity and employment rates have, at least for some time now, been indicative of much more than just the general rate of unemployment. This applies in particular to activities that are needed in more economically developed EU countries, and jobs that tend to be given to (highly) skilled staff.

Economists have been warning for a long time that recent developments in reduce the potential for growth in Croatia in the long term. The number of unemployed people in Croatia in the last quarter of the year, according to the results of the survey conducted in the last quarter of 2018, dropped when compared to the previous year by 46,000 people, or 23 percent, to 154,000 people. At the same time, however, the number of employees increased only very slightly, by 0.3 percent, meaning just 5,000 people more, to 1.64 million. In the fourth quarter, the activity rate and the employment rate recorded lower values ​​(51 percent and 46.6 percent), according to RBA.

In the last quarter of 2018, the numbers of economically inactive people older than fifteen increased by just one percent. Finally, the year ended with the fall of Croatia's unemployment rate to 8.3 percent, which is also the first drop below 10 percent since 2009, the year which followed the 2008 recession, but unfortunately this is partly a consequence of Croatia's negative demographic trend.

Although Croatia's growth in employment is of course very encouraging, analysts warn that it should be noted that the number of employees has been growing at a mild rate for the last five years, and that the average number of employees is still 6.5 percent lower than in before the crisis back in 2008. Overall, they conclude, Croatia's labour market remains very fragile and is burdened with some extremely serious structural problems, especially in terms of the total mismatch of supply and demand, long-term unemployment, and the falling number of working-age people for the ninth year in a row.

Make sure to follow our dedicated politics and business pages for much more.

Click here for the original article by Jadranka Dozan for Poslovni Dnevnik

We recently reported on an unusual job offer on the island of Sestrunj in the Zadar archipelago. What might appear to many to be a simple job working in a shop has attracted a rather large amount of attention, from Croatia, Europe, and even beyond.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 8th of April, 2019, there haven't been any schools on the island of Sestrunj for a long time now, and on the island itself, there are only twenty permanent residents.

While Croats tend to move to Ireland in their droves for work opportunities, higher salaries and more job security, Sestrunj, a small island in the Zadar archipelago, has been attracting attention from all sides since the posting of a job offer in a shop on the island, with would-be employees making contact from Ireland, Germany, and even all the way from America, as RTL reports.

Sestrunj - a little island close to Zadar, hasn't even had a shop for four months, and the only the place where you can go and have a drink is at some sort of pensioner's association on the island.

Since Sestrunj has been without a shop for the last four months, supplying the island naturally poses a big problem.

Eventually, the powers that be decided that Sestrunj's store needed to make a return to the island and contacted some commercial chains, and as the first condition for the job, they needed a person who would be willing to move to the island and live there. The interest in the small shop was quite surprising, and so far as many as forty job applications from around the world have arrived on Sestrunj's quiet shores.

"There were mostly people from Slavonia, and there were also people from the United States, Germany, Canada, a gentleman from Ireland called, he was willing to come back to the area," said Nenad Šužberić from Sestrunj.

"They're sick of the crowds in the city, they're probably expecting to come and have some peace on the island and all that," said Sestrunj resident Berislav Fatović.

The shop will need to be done up, but the apartment for the person who will work there is ready.

"It's nice to live here because it's quiet and it's different way of life than in Zadar, in town, but we're missing this shop because you need to think about the most basic necessities in advance, to make sure you've everything you need to have in the house," admitted Zdravka Dilber.

With the re-opening of Sestrunj's shop, everything would be much easier for the island's residents.

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

Chinese-Croatian relations grow ever closer as the Chinese expand their business empire in Dalmatia, not merely stopping at Pelješac bridge. The Chinese are now setting their sights on a vehicle factory in southern Croatia.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of April, 2019, an army of unemployed people, almost three thousand of them in total who are registered at the employment centres in Metković and Ploče in the Neretva region, received the news with understandably huge enthusiasm.

The Chinese will re-launch the Neretva valley, Slobodna Dalmacija writes, breathing life back into a part of Dalmatia that really needs it. Apart from the fact that they are already working on the aforementioned construction of the much anticipated Pelješac Bridge, the Chinese will soon embark on yet another major project in Croatia - a factory for electric cars and scooters in the Nova sela business district, which has so far been being developed in the Neretva valley's Kula Norinska area, but at a very slow pace.

This slow page is set to change a lot when the Green Tech Group, registered as a company in Zadar by Karl Soong along with Croatian entrepreneurs Mladen and Anthony Ninčević, starts with the construction of electric vehicles intended for the markets of Central and Eastern Europe down in Nova sela.

There are many unemployed people living in and around the Neretva valley, which is close enough yet just a bit too far away from potential employment in tourist areas like Dubrovnik. This news naturally brought a smile to the faces of many seeking steady work as in Kula Norinska, work began on the infrastructure in the future business zone in Nova sela, thus making this potentially enormous capital project start right there on ground in Dalmatia.

Twenty people would be employed to start things up at Dalmatia's brand new factory. However, when investment in the production of electric scooters, automobiles and batteries begins to add up and things gain some motion, up to 500 workers will be able to gain employment in various positions in the electric vehicle production facilities.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business page for more on China-Croatia relations, business in Croatia, the investment climate and working in Croatia, and much more.

As Darko Bicak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 27th of March, 2019, the president of the board of EY Croatia talks about the state of the country, the challenges and perspectives of the Croatian economy, and the need to promote successful stories, which they push forward through the Entrepreneur of the Year event.

Even though it has nominally existed for thirty years in the market economy, it's still necessary to properly promote entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs in the Republic of Croatia, and for this reason, the global consultancy company Ernst & Young (in Croatia, EYCroatia) is organising, for the fifth time in Croatia, the Entrepreneur of the Year project.

Why it's still necessary to promote entrepreneurship and what the general situation is with the prospects of the Croatian economy was discussed by Berislav Horvat, the president of the board of EY Croatia.

All analyses of the Croatian market show that the lack of workforce is the main challenge of Croatia's economic development. Do you see this as a short-term challenge that will, more or less, be resolved relatively quickly, or as a factor that will have more and more of an impact on the structure and development of the Croatian economy?

The labour shortage is definitely one of the major challenges facing the Croatian economy. The problem is no longer financing and a lack of capital, but just a lack of a workforce entirely. This problem will not be resolved that quickly and will represent a limiting factor for further business growth.

Although entrepreneurs and companies operating in Croatia mostly do have growth plans, the lack of a workforce could be a key obstacle. This applies to companies in various industries, from tourism and hospitality, construction and industrial production, to the IT sector.

Have other countries in ''New Europe'' encountered such challenges, and how did they solve them, or are Croatian specifics at play here, too?

Croatia isn't an exception here. Other European countries have been met with the same problems, where people were emigrating, but with growth and development, the demand for labour increased, so wages rose, which led to people returning. For us, the most important thing is to create a stable business environment that will enable entrepreneurs and companies to invest because that's a prerequisite for further employment.

On the side of the state, it's crucial to further reduce income tax and abolish the highest tax rate. This would increase the net salaries of employees, Croatia would become more attractive, and those who left Croatia would have a reason to return to it. I believe that wage growth in Croatia is a key factor that will affect the return of some of the people who have left.

New technologies, the so-called 4.0 industry, is increasingly affecting the global economy. Where is Croatia there?

We've noticed that in Croatia, companies are increasingly investing in digitisation. We, with a lot of companies, are working on a digital strategy to improve business or cost savings and this is definitely the direction in which companies need to develop. We hope that we'll soon be able to see the results of the announced state-level measures related to the digitisation of public administration, for example, the digitisation of the process of opening up companies.

How did 4.0 reflect on the work and client requests in consulting companies such as yours?

Clients are quite interested in what's going on abroad and how outsourcing companies are dealing with digitisation and the challenges it brings. They're looking for examples and the best practices. We adapted to the market situation by bringing an entire digital team to us last year. Now we can respond to market demands and provide a more rounded service.

In addition to advice, we can offer the implementation of complete digital solutions. This means that in addition to the tips of digitising today, we also provide a service for designing and programming web pages and other digital content. Clients are no longer just looking for advice, but a full service, which allows us to be innovative.

EY is organising the fifth EY Entrepreneur of the Year project. How has this program influenced the perception of entrepreneurship in Croatia and what benefits are there for participants, especially for the winners?

A lot has changed in these five years since we started the program. Before that, there wasn't much talk about entrepreneurship, startups and other interesting topics [we see] today. I believe that by putting out good entrepreneurial stories to the public, we've contributed to this shift in focus and helped our entrepreneurs become more socially accepted.

By participating in the program, entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to present themselves, their businesses and their successes, while the winner of each year is taken to Monaco in June to the world selection of EY Entrepreneurs of the Year. In those five days of various events, the entrepreneurs can connect and exchange experiences and gain a unique opportunity to present themselves to the whole world.

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Click here for the original article by Darko Bicak for Poslovni Dnevnik