Croatia's government is confident that it will manage to retain its credit rating above a speculative level, Finance Minister Slavko Linic told Bloomberg, a leading international site for business and financial market news.
Minister Linic said that in the event of the downgraded credit rating, Croatia might ask the International Monetary Fund for assistance to cut the costs of financing, the Croatia tportal.hr reported on Monday.
"We are not afraid that the credit rating will be cut, as we have a stable government, we reduced the public wage bill and we've been fulfilling the cost-cutting goals we set in January," Linic said. "The only place where the government failed is not pushing state investment in the first six months," he said.
Linic forecast the stagnation of Croatia's economy for the second consecutive year, as a consequence of the intensified European debt crisis.
"Our main goal remains continuing with fiscal consolidation efforts and reviving government investment in infrastructure, transport and energy," Linic said blaming "irresponsible people in charge of state companies" for failure to increase investment.
