Damir Kuštrak proposes a quasi-factoring model. The government could buy out the receivables of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs towards state-owned enterprises and the public sector with very little money. The state should intervene between these companies because the banking sector cannot.
Until now, Finance Minister Ivan Šuker regularly performed his act on New Year’s Eve, triumphantly pointing at the payment order on his desk in front of the cameras and announcing that in the current budget year, the last obligation of the state budget had been settled. This year, that will no longer be possible; there is no money in the state budget, and some obligations for this year have already been transferred to the beginning of next year. Even if that were not the case and Šuker repeated his performance, journalists would say that the state budget has been fully realized, but what about the overdue unpaid obligations of large state-owned enterprises and the public sector in general? Nine months ago, Šuker announced as part of anti-recession measures that the state budget would settle all its obligations on time and that users of budget funds would pay their obligations no later than within 60 days. Entrepreneurs (wrongly) understood that the promised 60-day deadline meant that the state would settle its debts to state-owned enterprises, and that state-owned enterprises and the public sector in general would settle their obligations to all their suppliers. Instead, Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor today assures entrepreneurs that public enterprises settle their obligations within 60 days. However, this is not true, as the rise in illiquidity is now generated not by the state budget but by state-owned enterprises led by INA, HEP, Hrvatske ceste, HŽ, etc., which still do not pay their suppliers on time.
