Managers in foreign-owned companies receive much higher salaries than their colleagues in Croatian-owned businesses.
According to Croatian Association of Managers and Entrepreneurs, in Croatia there are about 20,000 managers at all levels, with an average salary of about 12,000 kuna. Lower management earns about 8,000 kuna a month, but there are CEOs whose salaries range from 50,000 to 200,000 kuna a month. However, there are just a few such well-paid managers, and they mostly work for large foreign-owned companies, reports Novi List on August 10, 2016.
Salaries of CEOs in public companies which are in majority state ownership are legally limited to about 17,000 kuna a month. Managers in such companies are mostly selected according to their compatibility with ruling political parties, rather than through a public competition or through head hunting agencies. Although all public companies claim that their managements do not receive any bonuses for business results, a recent example of the Board of Directors of the Croatian Forests public company, which demands to be paid more than five million kuna in bonuses, demonstrates that this is not the case.
Average salary of managers in Croatia is about 130 percent higher than the average wage of regular employees. The average regular wage is higher than the median wage which was, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, a little less than 5,000 kuna in May.
“When it comes to salaries of top management, it is important to compensate the responsibility that manager take over, but it is also necessary to take into account overall social circumstances, so as not to jeopardize the stability of society”, says macroeconomist Mladen Vedriš. He adds that it is not important how many times the highest salary in the country is higher than the lowest one, but how much the lowest salary is, and whether it is enough to pay the bills. Vedriš adds that, in Croatia there is a great difference between salaries of CEOs in foreign multinationals and salaries of managers of Croatian-owned companies.
