The new labour minister said this was the first and the last time for him to present statistics about unemployment at a news conference, explaining that all figures would in the future be available on the HZZ website constantly and that they would be updated twice a month.

The HZZ director, Ankica Paun Jarallah introduced the tool "Statistika on-line" to browse the agency's website in search for the latest data on employment.

Presenting his plans, Mrsic said that high labour costs were also one of the factors of a high unemployment rate.

Experts assess that a 10-percent reduction of labour costs would bring a five-percent increase in employment, Mrsic said adding that this should not be treated as a message that employers should cut salaries but that the labour tax costs shout be reduced.

He announced the reorganisation of the Croatian Employment Service in order to improve a ratio of job advisors to job seekers, having in mind that there is the insufficient number of job advisors as currently one job advisor covers 800 job-seekers, and the plan is to have one for 300 jobless.

In Croatia, currently 52.3 percent of economically active population is employed, and the government's objective is to increase this rate to 60 percent by 2015, Mrsic said, adding that the ministry will prepare a series of measures, such as mobilisation of long standing unemployed persons, legalisation of informal work or reduction of labour tax costs, to achieve that objective.