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Balen: Croatia needs 2000 IT specialists, while there are 5000 people on the job market with outdated ICT qualifications

– If the Patriotic Coalition comes to power, the situation in large IT companies that are state-owned, such as Carnet, Apis, and Fina, will certainly change. Their privatization is also possible – stated Ivan Barać, president of the HDZ Digital Society Committee during the panel discussion “Digital Economy and ICT – Drivers of the Development of the Croatian Economy” held today at the Croatian Employers’ Association.

Barać also announced that he would abolish the profit tax for domestic startups in the first three years, although when asked from the audience šwhat a startup means to him in Croatia, he did not provide an exact answer.

– Such privatization would be a step backward, but perhaps the HDZ’s path to hell is paved with good intentions. Four years ago, there was no cooperation between the IT sector and the state at all, and now inquiries about the E-Citizen project are being made in Mexico. Kudos to the private sector, but the people who work for the state also conceived and created that project – responded the representative of the ‘Croatia Grows’ coalition, Darko Parić, to his HDZ opponent as well as representatives of the real sector. 

Barać and Parić agreed on something. Both believe that capable people work in the public sector and that it is often unjustly criticized by employees in the private sector.

Miroslav Mađarić, a representative of OraH at this panel, mentioned the ‘Information Society Policies’ they advocate several times, while Drago Cmuk, assistant director and head of R&D at Končar, and a member of the presidency of the newly formed party ‘Smart’, stated that in Croatia there is only an illusion of public procurement that has arisen from a strange ecosystem between large companies and the state. The results presented before the panel discussion indicated that Croatia lacks quality ICT personnel.

– Currently, there are 5000 people on the job market with outdated ICT qualifications. At this moment, there are 2000 positions offered for employees in the IT sector on job portals, while out of 1500 students graduating in computer science, only 850 enter the market – warned Hrvoje Balen, a member of the Management Board of the ‘Algebra’ college.

The Minister of Entrepreneurship and Crafts, Gordan Maras, after a few courteous words to the attendees and the usual expression of satisfaction with what was accomplished in the previous term, left the panel before it began.