Croatian islanders might enjoy what many of us would assume to be a life of paradise on one of the many stunning islands dotted along the coastline, our naive view tends to hide a lot of the issues faced on a daily basis by island inhabitants. While numerous initiatives have sprouted over the last few years to try to equalise the standards on Croatia’s islands to that of the mainland, things are, of course, slow. Despite that, the Croatian Government has put forward an island development plan for this year.
As Morski writes on the 27th of January, 2019, the Ministry of Regional Development and European Union Funds is continuing to invest heavily into Croatia’s many islands through the island development program by encouraging local and regional self-government units to invest in the development of their own, respective island infrastructure and economy, the competent department of the aforementioned ministry stated.
The overall objective of 2019’s island development program is the creating of preconditions for sustainable economic and social development by enhancing the general quality of life of the inhabitants of the islands through encouraging the development of certain things specific to islands and island life.
The program’s users will be numerous units of local and regional self-government which, in their administrative boundaries, include Croatia’s inhabited islands and their associated periodically inhabited and uninhabited islands and islets, as well as the Pelješac peninsula.
The coverage of the program refers to the inhabited islands of the Republic of Croatia which are located within the six units of regional self-government, ie, the six coastal counties which have islands under their jurisdiction (Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Lika-Senj County, Zadar County, Šibenik-Knin County, Split-Dalmatia County and Dubrovnik-Neretva County).
To briefly recall, in 2018, the Croatian Government invested a massive 19,000,000.00 kuna in the same program on a total of forty different projects. More projects for the islands and their development are set to come throughout the course of this year.
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