Zadar Continues in the Footsteps of Zagreb

This year has started excellently for Zadar, just as it ended for Zagreb when it was declared the best Advent destination.

Zadar has become the best European destination for this year among 20 cities in a vote on the European Best Destination association’s portal. Out of 288,992 votes, Zadar received 57,616, with Athens and Plovdiv receiving the next highest votes after Zadar. The Croatian city has defeated the largest – Amsterdam, Prague, Paris, London, Barcelona, Vienna, Rome, and Milan. Perhaps this is a great announcement for the upcoming tourist season.  

The public space is completely cluttered with attacks, defamations, accusations, and harsh words. The amount of verbal violence that many do not shy away from is incredible. Instead of calming passions, ugly confrontations of opinions from the right and left sides occur almost daily. Dirty laundry is being aired in inter-party confrontations, even within the SDP, in the fight for a new party president. Prime Minister Tihomir Orešković has withdrawn, leaving discussions to party leaders. He endured a one-day barrage in the Parliament during the vote for the new government in silence, but what will he do now? It is truly necessary to lower the ball and let things start flowing more calmly, hopefully in a good direction.      

The government is expected to adopt this year’s budget on March 10, cutting the deficit to three percent of GDP. This was stated in Brussels by Zdravko Marić, the Minister of Finance, who participated for the first time in the EU finance ministers’ conference. Pierre Moscovici, the Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, supported the need for structural changes in the budget and the entire economy, Marić said. The European Commission is satisfied and expects the outlined plans to be implemented, and the minister highlighted economic growth and the management of public finances as the foundations of the Croatian government’s economic policy.

The export climate should benefit from a simpler administrative process and public procurement, announced Tomislav Panenić, the Minister of Economy at Lider Exporters Club. Private companies of strategic and special interest will also be identified including small businesses, along with support for industry and exports. Panenić announced that the State Inspectorate would be restructured and warnings would be introduced instead of fines for violations. Damir Bulić, the CEO of Kraš, stated that incentives for exporters should include fiscal relief, easier access to financing sources, effective state administration, European standards in import supervision, and strengthening economic diplomacy. Bulić advised exporters to follow growing markets in the Near and Far East, while Tomislav Mazal, the CEO of Đuro Đaković, said that exporters should focus on improving their business systems to be more competitive and rely less on the state to solve their problems.

At the conference on Personal Finance and Personal Bankruptcy organized by the business weekly Lider and the Effectus Higher Education Institution, Guste Santini, an economic analyst, stated that politics has consciously compromised foreign investors. He also emphasized that we have not mentally moved from socialism to a market economy that brings social risks. Excessively high taxes affect foreign investments, which will not occur until we have normal taxes, he pointed out, and we also need a protective interest rate on capital. Renata Duka, the Assistant Minister of Justice, advocated for the consumer bankruptcy institute for over-indebted honest citizens who need a new, responsible start and creditor satisfaction. The bankruptcy process in Europe lasts an average of 18 months, while in Croatia it lasts three years, Duka noted. The lecture ‘Tax and Financial Implications of the Consumer Bankruptcy Law’ was delivered by Ivan Idžojtić, a certified tax advisor. He warned that the financial situation after consumer bankruptcy can improve if the part of the claim collected in bankruptcy is greater than the discounted value of that same amount that would be collected outside of bankruptcy, if the part of the claim not collected in bankruptcy would not otherwise be collected, and if what is collected is taxable while what is uncollected is not taxable. In the panel discussion ‘The Personal Bankruptcy Law – Personal Bankruptcy in Practice’, Davor Huić, the Executive Director of the Taxpayers Association Lipa, stated that the state has interfered in the privacy of citizens regarding the ‘Swiss franc’ which will end in disaster for taxpayers and that citizens are financially illiterate.    

It is possible that the Zika virus, along with microcephaly in newborns, also causes neurological disorders. This refers to Guillain-Barré syndrome, where the immune system attacks the nerves, slowly leading to paralysis. The World Health Organization has reported that it has been recorded in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Suriname, and that the virus is present in 34 countries, of which 26 are in South America. As many as 220,000 soldiers in Brazil, where 1.5 million people are infected, are involved in the fight against mosquitoes, the carriers of Zika. There is also talk of not holding the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, but Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president, believes that the Games are not in danger as Brazil will achieve significant results in the fight against mosquitoes by August.