Five times more money has been invested in Primorac’s business system than, for example, in the Ministry of the Interior for the same level of functionality
Written by: Ivica Grčar
[email protected]
In the first column ‘Justice for All’, I published that Zlatko Štrbinić, the owner and director of Infomare, contacted me, who wrote in an open letter to Minister Primorac: ‘You are the most responsible for the development of IT activities in Croatia, its standardization and in public procurement, which are prerequisites for stimulating the production and export of software and related services. You are doing this insufficiently or poorly just like your predecessors.’ Štrbinić supported this claim by citing the example of competition from Croatian public companies, universities, and scientific institutions to Croatian IT entrepreneurs in a manner that contradicts EU regulations, abuses in public procurement, favoritism towards large companies contrary to the declared policy of promoting small and medium-sized enterprises, etc.
In the last issue of Lider, I announced that I would write about this today, as well as that I sent a journalistic inquiry to Minister Primorac regarding Štrbinić’s letter on January 15. However, instead of Minister Primorac, my journalistic inquiry was answered by spokesperson Duje Bonaći: ‘The minister is on an official trip outside Croatia, so unfortunately I will not be able to get his response to your inquiry today. However, as far as I know, for all jobs related to informatization that Mr. Štrbinić mentions in that open letter, the exclusively competent authority is the Central State Office for e-Croatia (http://www.e-hrvatska.hr/), not the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports – so, in my opinion, Mr. Štrbinić has unfortunately missed the address with his open letter.’
Lider helps: How to register real estate purchased from a foreigner
Foreigners are issued OIBs by police officers
Reacting to the article in the last issue about the pitfalls in the amendments to the Land Registry Act, reader Vlado Golub from Čakovec wrote to me: ‘I also have a case of refusal to register ownership of real estate that was purchased on January 5, 2009, from an Austrian citizen. The refusal was explained by the fact that the Austrian citizen does not have a personal identification number or a unique citizen identification number. Austrians do not have such numbers; they only have a ‘verziherung numer’. Which number should I enter in the annex of the contract?’ asks this reader.
Fortunately for the reader, a glimmer of light appeared at the end of the ‘bureaucratic tunnel’: Article 5 of the Regulation on Personal Identification Numbers states that the Ministry of the Interior issues OIBs to foreign individuals. Dear reader, go to the Ministry of the Interior so that the police can issue an OIB to your seller from Austria.
There are two inaccuracies in this response from Bonaći. I sent the inquiry to Minister Primorac on January 15, so two weeks ago, and Minister Primorac has not been on ‘an official trip outside Croatia’ for the entire two weeks. And, secondly, the website of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (http://public.mzos.hr) explicitly states: ‘The Ministry of Science, Education and Sports performs administrative and other tasks related to planning, coordinating, and implementing the development of IT activities and its integration into a comprehensive information system in the Republic of Croatia.’ Why couldn’t spokesperson Bonaći give my inquiry to Minister Primorac on another day, and not only when he is on ‘an official trip outside Croatia’, and is it possible that the spokesperson does not know what is written on ‘his’ website? I believe this is not a matter of ignorance, but rather a clumsy attempt to avoid answering.
