Today, no one asks foreign investors about the origin of their money because the state is hungry for investments

The construction company BBR Adria, a member of the Swiss group BBR, achieved a profit of 2.5 million kuna last year, and its CEO Želimir Bodiroga says he will be happy if he achieves any positive result this year.

However, if he signs two contracts with Slovenian partners and one in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the coming days, the situation will be more favorable. He does not want to talk about these deals for now, but he considers it an advantage that the company specializes in construction.

Bodiroga is a native of Mostar, having completed his engineering degree before the war at the local university, where he received the rector’s award as the best student. Since 1992, he has worked in Berlin for the renowned design firm Liepe&Steigelmann. He was the regional manager for Daimler’s Debis GmbH in Southern Europe for four years, and since 2004, he has been the director of BBR Adria, which primarily covers the market of the former Yugoslavia. Although he heads a small company, he is always an interesting interlocutor as he openly analyzes the problems faced by builders. He skeptically shakes his head left and right when we talk about the present and says there are only two cranes in Zagreb.

• In August, the number of issued building permits fell by ten percent compared to last year, and the value of works decreased by 44 percent. What do you say to claims that there are opportunities in the renovation of facades? – That is a more expensive pie than the pan, and there is no development in construction there. The solution lies in investments, but we must understand that we will wait a long time for foreign investors. Those who have come to Croatia are mostly ad hoc established companies. No one asks them about the origin of their money because the state is hungry for investments, and construction companies also want to do anything. We overcapacitated ourselves ten years ago by building highways, and to this day we are paying the price for that.

• What do you mean by that? – Due to political pressure, we rushed to build the highway in four years, while it would have been normal to build it over ten years. A problem arose because artificial disruptions in supply were induced, there was a lack of people, mixers… That is why many started to engage in this business, so in every county, you could find a concrete plant, a mixer, employees. Croatia thrived best during the highway construction, and people believed that jobs would not disappear, and a slightly less unhealthy theory was that we would build roads in Bosnia and Montenegro.

• Are the Bosnians, who are building highways in phases, smarter then? – In terms of capacity utilization, they are. They planned it well. We, on the other hand, have found that many mixers and concrete plants are no longer operational, and huge quantities of construction materials have remained in Lika. Companies from Bosnia go through Lika and Slovenia and buy the remnants of that material. Moreover, there has always been a debate between the ruling and opposition parties here about who is more deserving of the highways, although everyone needs to understand that for those in power, it must be the main goal. In Bosnia, there are no such problems, and I must admit that we have a fairly correct relationship there. Now they are going for the most important interventions, from Tarčin, i.e., Ivan planina to Mostar and Počitelj. We might even connect Zagreb and Sarajevo by highway through Herzegovina before we do so through Bosanski Brod.