The Croatian Wood Cluster suggests that the future government merge the responsibilities of two ministries – for economy and for entrepreneurship. According to the opinion of the Cluster’s director, Marijan Kavran, the lack of coordination between ministries is one of the main problems of the economy. Furthermore, he believes that the reform of the chamber system should continue and that an industrial chamber should be established based on the Italian Confindustria model.
– We must urgently implement the EU smart specialization program from which up to 330 million euros can be drawn and establish operational bodies for strategic support to production and export. However, without greater involvement of science and improvement of educational curricula, we will achieve none of this, which means it is essential to increase investments in research and development, for which we currently allocate less than 0.5 percent of GDP – says Kavran.
Such an approach, they believe in HDK, would significantly improve the wood industry, which currently exports mostly raw materials and semi-finished products, although there are conditions for the development of final production. To illustrate this potential, Kavran emphasizes that Croatia is the fourth largest producer of parquet in the world, that Slavonian oak has been a real hit globally for the last two hundred years, and that we produce new energy-efficient windows using nanotechnology.
In the first nine months of this year, wood processors recorded a 13 percent increase in industrial production compared to the same period last year, and their share in total Croatian exports is 10.4 percent. Kavran expects the year to end with 1.1 billion euros solely from exports, which means that import coverage by exports is 260 percent.
