If only the Croatian economy could match this rate of growth…
On 30 April 2016, the Register of War Veterans included 505,221 persons, which means that since December 2012, when the Register was first published, the number of war veterans has increased by 2,543, reports tportal.hr on May 6, 2016.
The Office of Veterans Affairs Minister Tomo Medved said that the increase was due to late registration of three categories of veterans. The first group includes “people who were members of the Armed Forces and had the status of veterans, but were not included in the official records of the Defence Ministry by mistake”. The second group are “people who after the publication of the Register officially received the status of Croatian Homeland War Veteran”, while the third group are people who have been awarded the status on the basis of verdicts of the High Administrative Court.
For comparison, in his message to Parliament in 1996, after the war had ended, then Croatian President Franjo Tuđman said that Croatia had 336,000 veterans.
According to official data, in April 2016 there were 72,200 pensions paid to users on the basis of the Law on the Rights of the Croatian Homeland War Veterans and Their Family Members. Of these 72,200 veterans pensions paid in April, as many as 57,427 were disability pensions. The average pension of war veterans was a bit lower than the average salary in Croatia and stood at 5,085 kuna, while the average disability pension amounted to 4,852 kuna. Among veterans, 4,620 people received pensions higher than 8,000 kuna, while 6,280 people had pensions between 7,000 and 8,000 kuna.
At the same time, in April of this year 1,138,530 regular pensions were paid, in the average amount of 2,245 kuna. Only 1,740 people received pensions higher than 8,000 kuna (mainly former politicians who receive additional bonuses), and most pensioners received on average between 2,000 and 3,000 kuna.
