For the Development of Business Infrastructure, 380 Million Kuna Secured

At the beginning of October, a call for proposals “Development of Business Infrastructure” worth 380 million kuna will be announced, as announced on Thursday by the technical minister of regional development and EU funds Tomislav Tolušić and the technical minister of entrepreneurship and crafts Darko Horvat.

The total available funds from the European Regional Development Fund allocated for this call for proposals amount to 380 million kuna. The minimum amount of non-repayable funds that can be awarded is 200 thousand kuna, while the maximum is 20 million kuna. Through project activities under the call for proposals Development of Business Infrastructure, investments will be made in tangible and intangible assets with the aim of building, reconstructing, and equipping new and existing entrepreneurial business infrastructure. Eligible applicants, as well as their partners under this call, are units of local and regional self-government and entrepreneurial support institutions registered in the Unique Register of Entrepreneurial Infrastructure.

Units of local and regional self-government and support institutions will be able to apply for the public call from October 1, and it will be closed on December 31, after which the qualification and evaluation of the submitted applications will take place, said Horvat. As he stated, the public call opens up the possibility for municipalities, cities, and counties to improve and build their entrepreneurial infrastructure according to their development plans and thus attract new investments that will create new jobs.

He also announced that two new calls are in the final phase – one aimed at the commercialization of innovations worth 120 million kuna and the other aimed at supporting entrepreneurial institutions. Horvat stated that Croatia has “learned to draw funds from the EU’s common treasury” and is confident that this year it will draw more from that common treasury than it contributes.

– We continue to create conditions for growth, development, and increased competitiveness for our entrepreneurs through EU funds. They also have numerous opportunities through seven calls for entrepreneurship with a total value of nearly 3 billion kuna and through various financial instruments that come in the form of credit lines, guarantee schemes, and venture capital funds, said Tolušić.

He emphasized that Croatia is obliged to pay 3.7 billion kuna into the EU budget this year, and so far, 5.4 billion kuna has been drawn from EU funds.

– Practically every week, Croatia draws about 200 million kuna of new money, and this is definitely already the most successful year since Croatia has access to European money, he said.

Last year, as he noted, approximately 4 billion kuna was drawn, and now we are already close to 5.5 billion.

Tolušić also stated that there is still work to be done in simplifying procedures, although significant progress has been made in that segment. He believes that Croatia will soon be among the better EU members in terms of drawing funds from EU funds. In the next three to four years, as he said, Croatia will rise to the upper half of countries that are “super positive” in drawing funds from EU funds.