In press release no. 98 entitled EBRD report on transition toward sustainable market economy: Croatia lags behind, Katarina Ott writes about EBRD’s Transition Report 2017 – 2018 entitled “Sustaining Growth” and compares Croatia with other transition countries. The EBRD report is another in a series of reports published each year by that and other sources, such as the European Commission and the IMF. 

It shows that for the transition countries observed by the EBRD and several non-transition countries (Sweden, Germany, the USA, and the Czech Republic), the major difficulties are competitiveness and good governance, while they are showing slightly better results in the areas of integration and resilience. Central European and Baltic countries (especially Estonia, Latvia and Slovenia) come closest to a sustainable market economy, while Central Asian countries face the biggest challenges.

In the press release no. 99 National strategic investment projects and project cycles in the Republic of Croatia, Anto Bajo and Jaksa Puljiz offer a commentary on the new Act on Strategic Investment Projects of the Republic of Croatia which has just been presented for debate before the Parliament. The purpose of the Act is to define, in a more concise manner, strategic investment projects and activities aiming at removing administrative obstacles for their implementation.

The aim is to shorten and accelerate the licensing procedure for public and private investment projects as well as for public-private partnership investment projects of strategic interest for the Republic of Croatia.

“The Act proposal provides a quality institutional framework to remove administrative limitations and thus attract large-scale investment projects to Croatia. However, it will certainly not resolve its key investment policy problems”, the paper also says.