Grbin: You won the elections and formed a government, but you did not gain ownership of the Republic of Croatia

SDP representative Peđa Grbin criticized the Minister for State Property Management Goran Marić on Tuesday for his statement that HEP is not in his portfolio and that he knows nothing about the privatization of that company, questioning what use is this ministry if the minister knows nothing about the privatization of the largest state-owned company.

Grbin emphasized after the break that Marić heads a department that performs administrative and other tasks related to the management, disposal, acquisition, and sale of state property, asking “what use is the Ministry for State Property Management when the minister at the head of that ministry knows nothing about the privatization of the largest trading company that remains in the ownership of the Republic of Croatia.”

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He reminded that the Prime Minister announced the privatization of HEP a year ago, specifically that he would nationalize INA and finance it through the privatization of HEP, and he also criticized the fact that the Parliament has not wanted to discuss the interpellation about INA for more than a year, even though it is in procedure.

Grbin: We do not have any document regulating how state property is managed

He noted that the last plan for managing property owned by the Republic of Croatia was adopted by the government of Zoran Milanović, and that the last strategy was adopted for the period 2013-2017, which has also expired.

– We do not have any document that would regulate how state property will be managed, what will be sold, what we will not sell, what we will encumber, etc., said Grbin, asserting that the Ministry for State Property Management in its current form is unnecessary. “You won the elections and formed a government, but you did not gain ownership of the Republic of Croatia,” Grbin told the ruling party.

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Branimir Bunjac, on behalf of the Living Wall, warned about the slowdown in GDP growth in the last quarter of 2017 to 2 percent, and the increase in public debt in November last year to over a record 300 billion kuna.

Bunjac on the slowdown in GDP growth: Croatia is still in recession, this is a government debacle

– A GDP growth of 2 percent does not even cover interest costs, which means that, considering interest costs and public debt, Croatia is still in recession, said Bunjac, assessing it as a “debacle of the government.”

He emphasized that the average GDP growth of EU member states is 2.6 percent, and that, for example, Hungary and Latvia have growth of 4.8 percent, Slovenia 6.2 percent, Poland 4.3 percent, Romania 7 percent, etc.

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– Is the poor economic picture the fault of the Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, electoral legislation, Facebook comments, busts of politicians, names of streets and plaques, or is it due to the lack of reforms, the high cost of territorial organization, the public administration having a management crisis due to party patronage while corruption flourishes, asked Bunjac.

He called on the ruling majority to start addressing issues of the economy and justice, that is, the future, not the past.