"I know this is their maximum. We can say they are doing their best, but it is not enough to pull us out of the crisis. They are not showing enough quality, enough initiative and enough energy to do anything positive in this country, hence all these price increases," Karamarko told the press before a meeting of the HDZ's parliamentary group.

When asked if he thought that current price increases were justified by higher energy prices, Karamarko said that the government should stop making excuses and referring to the performance of previous governments, recalling that the ruling SDP had said earlier they would not discuss the work of previous governments.

"None of us had expected them to turn Croatia into a Switzerland by September, because that's impossible, but we all expected them to start reversing negative trends in the Croatian economy," Karamarko said.

He described as a lie the government's initial projection that Croatia would end 2012 with a GDP growth rate of 0.8 per cent, which was later revised down to a drop of 2.1 per cent.

"They are lying. Let's stop finding excuses for them. It was their job to find mechanisms for reversing the negative trends, and all along the media have been saying that it is not their fault because there was nothing they could do. That's not true, they should have found a way to avoid this happening. This is a blow to people's living standards," Karamarko said.

Karamarko said that the HDZ would continue to closely follow the government's work and in that regard would intensify its activities in Parliament, which begins its autumn session on Tuesday.