The Governor of the Croatian National Bank, Željko Rohatinski, received the award for the best governor in the world in 2008 in London. He and his team undertook a series of unusual and seemingly interventionist measures that helped Croatian banks navigate the global banking crisis in September 2008 better and more easily than many others, writes the portal hrt.hr.
Other banks, international financial institutions like the IMF, and our internal institutions were not thrilled with what we undertook, said Rohatinski. The most important result of these measures is that we managed to reduce the external debt of banks and the decline in loans from 25 percent in 2006 to 11 percent in 2008. It was fast enough, and there was no slowdown in the economy, he concluded. Liquid reserves in the banking system quickly grew to 40 percent of GDP value, which secured Croatia in the first wave of the global financial collapse when many countries were severely affected.
Economic analysts declared these measures visionary, and some countries in the region began to follow the example of Governor Rohatinski. Philip Alexander, the financial editor of the magazine Bankar, explained how the award is given to those who step outside the framework of national measures and demonstrate innovation that can be applied elsewhere. Everyone agrees that Rohatinski showed strength and leadership, timely predicted the dangers to the country’s financial stability, and despite opposition, implemented what proved beneficial for the difficult times we are in now.
