‘The point is not to lay off people in public administration, but to employ those who know how to do the job,’ Ljubo Jurčić stated among other things in his first lecture at the 23rd traditional conference of the Croatian Economic Society in Opatija.
As the president of the Society explained, production will not increase because people are being laid off, and production is the key to economic development. In a comprehensive lecture where he presented the well-known diagnosis of Croatian economic problems, Jurčić provided a series of comparisons of Croatia with the world and the European Union, from which it emerges that Croatia is among the weakest countries in the EU. As repetition is the mother of knowledge, the attendees once again absorbed the privatization, the exchange rate of the kuna, the currency clause, the second pension pillar, and the structure of investments as summarized causes of such poor results, as well as the insistence of Croatian economic policy on internal and external balance, instead of on the rate of economic growth and full employment.
The latter two goals are absolute priorities of any economic policy, Jurčić emphasized, sending a message to the Government that without an increase in production, there are no jobs. Commenting on the poor economic situation, Jurčić concluded that Croatia would be among the worst in the region if it weren’t for tourism. The fact that it accounts for about 17 percent of Croatian GDP indicates Croatia’s underdevelopment, not the great development of tourism, which can only be a supplementary activity, not the foundation of economic policy.
