At the opening ceremony of the Second Private Equity Conference in South East Europe, which was being held in Zagreb on Tuesday, Croatia's Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor said that her cabinet had ensured HRK 1 billion for attracting risk capital funds into Croatia.
Within its measures aimed at the country's economic recovery, the government is trying to ensure a favourable climate for investments, including risk capital funds that can be important drivers of the economic development, as they contribute to creating new jobs and preserving the existing ones, as well as to higher investments in research and development and to the strengthening of exports, Kosor said at the conference.
Croatia has so far been successful in attracting that kind of investments and last month the government decided to set up funds for economic cooperation with the aim of encouraging the development of the private equity and venture capital market.
The government is intensively working on creating conditions for attracting other forms of investments, primarily direct foreign investments, and these efforts are being supported by the prospect of completing Croatia's European Union accession negotiations soon as well as by the national anti-corruption drive, Kosor said.
She hopes that Croatia will wrap up its EU membership talks by the end of this year.
In this context she said that Croatia's legislative and regulatory framework was almost in its entirety adjusted to the EU acquis communautaire and that Croatia must be ready to withdraw funds from the EUR 3.5 billion package designated for the country as soon as it joined the European bloc.
Economy Minister Djuro Popijac acquainted the conference with the government's decision to establish economic cooperation funds which should facilitate the financing of the entrepreneurship in the times of crisis and recession.
On behalf of the Croatian Employers' Association (HUP), businessman Emil Tedeschi welcome that initiative from the government.
Before leaving the hotel in which the conference was being held, Kosor met Tedeschi, and HUP President Damir Kustrak for coffee. On Monday, HUP leaders were the target of severe criticism from Deputy Prime Minister Darko Milinovic who accused them of being unfair as they joined a team of economic advisers of the new President Ivo Josipovic, without Prime Minister Kosor's prior knowledge.
However, none of those at today's coffee wanted to say whether the disagreement was removed and what was on the agenda of their conversation.
