Can the state be efficient? Certainly. The question is whether it can be so in Croatia, said Darko Tipurić, a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, during the opening of the conference State, but Efficient at the Westin hotel in Zagreb on Tuesday.
– When we sum up the revenues of the companies of our panelists, we get an amount of around two billion euros. It certainly matters how this capital is managed. We are holding this conference out of spite: we are putting forward the thesis that the state can be efficient, which may not be popular with part of our audience, said Miodrag Šajatović, welcoming the attendees and handing the floor to Darko Tipurić.
>>> Miodrag Šajatović: Are you rolling your eyes at the topic ‘state, but efficient’? How about we talk a bit?
– The problems that plague public companies are non-economic behavior in business decisions, structural inertia, the tendency to exploit privileged positions in the market, and the immensely large influence of politics on business. Managing public goods, water, forests, often does not end well after privatization. The risks of privatization are often forgotten. The state can and should be an active owner. Privatization is important, but not at any cost. If we look at Scandinavian countries, we see that there is a balance between different forms of ownership. Therefore, we should ask whether there is a possibility of distancing from the prevailing neoliberal ideology? It is a powerful ideology, like a religion. And we see huge levels of inequality.
– Can the state be efficient? Certainly. The question is whether it can be so in Croatia, said Darko Tipurić, a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb.
It is unlikely that we will arrive at unequivocal solutions. There are a number of open topics, a number of open dilemmas. The question should not be whether to privatize or not, but what, when, and how. Something definitely needs to be public, something definitely needs to be private. Can public companies be efficient, that is the question, said Lajoš Žager, envoy of the President of the Republic of Croatia, opening the conference.
Since the public sector significantly lags behind the private sector in competitiveness and effectiveness, slowing down national competitiveness, the conference will attempt to point to the possibilities of better management of it and present new potentials for its different role and necessary action in the economy. The topics are centralization and professionalization of the management role at the national level, privatization through public-private partnerships, and other forms of cooperation between the public and private sectors, as well as organizational restructuring.
>>> Tipurić: It is necessary to change a number of segments for Croatia to raise its level of competitiveness
The goal of the gathering is to highlight the weaknesses of management practices in public enterprises and their consequences on business, to strengthen the potentials of the effectiveness of the public sector through various models of cooperation with the private sector aimed at building and strengthening competitiveness. Additionally, the goal is to promote sustainable privatization models of excessive public assets and non-business real estate portfolios.
The conference is primarily intended for public enterprises, then consultants, lawyers, the academic community, and government agencies.
