ZAGREB, April 18, 2018 – The majority of entrepreneurs in Croatia (76%) consider the business climate in the country to be bad while 23% consider it neither good nor bad and only 1% consider it to be encouraging, shows the latest survey conducted by the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK) and presented on Wednesday at a conference on the business climate in Croatia.
Of more than 750 entrepreneurs surveyed, 53% consider that the business climate in 2017 was unchanged compared to 2016, 31% consider that it deteriorated while 16% consider that there was some improvement.
Areas where entrepreneurs see the greatest obstacles are legal security, primarily due to the frequent changes in regulations, the judiciary, where the length of proceedings is seen as a problem, and tax obligations.
Legal security was seen as the main obstacle in last year’s survey too, and this year it was given an even poorer mark. Entrepreneurs were asked to scale each problem from zero to five, with five being the worst score, and legal security was given a mark of 4.22 whereas last year it was given a score of 3.53.
Communication with public administration is seen as having improved the most.
HGK president Luka Burilović said that the situation was changing but not fast enough and that last year they had expected a lot from reforms. Unfortunately, most of the reforms announced were halted or slowed down, primarily due to the crisis in Agrokor.
Burilović underscored that this year had to be a turning point and that reforms had to be intensified. He added that a 3% growth rate is good “however, if we want to achieve what we need, we have to be more ambitious and an optimum growth would be about 4% to 5%.”
