340 businesses applied to the call, and 28 – five micro and small businesses, six medium-size businesses and 17 big companies – were awarded money from the EU Competitiveness and Cohesion Fund.
Economy and Sustainable Development Minister Tomislav Ćorić said he expected the companies that were given grants to increase their energy efficiency as well as competitiveness as a result of lower energy consumption and increased production efficiency.
He noted that significant funds were envisaged for that purpose also under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and that domestic businesses could expect new calls for applications by the end of this year and the beginning of 2022.
The approved grants must be invested in the next one to two years.
As a small, open economy, in the previous decades Croatia mostly exploited its development capacity in the services sector, including tourism, while now national plans and strategies should put special emphasis on manufacturing industries so that the country can catch up with EU standards, Ćorić said, adding that domestic producers could impact export as one of the key variables of the national economy.
“There will be more calls like this one in the period to come,” he said.
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