The assembly of the Indo-Croatian Business Club has elected a new leadership. Ivica Žigić, the former Secretary General of the Club and Director of the Corporate Communications Sector of Hrvatska elektroprivreda d.d., has been elected as the new president, while Mario Stančin, Economic Advisor to the Ambassador of India to the Republic of Croatia, has been elected as the new Secretary General. In 2019, the trade cooperation between the two countries amounted to 149.31 million euros. In 2018, it was 137.35 million euros, while in the first quarter of 2020, the trade exchange was recorded at 62.87 million euros. In the first quarter of 2020, imports of goods from India increased by 25 percent compared to the same period in 2019, while exports during the same period decreased by 60 percent.
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– In 2019, Croatia imported goods and services from India worth 109 million euros, while at the same time, the export of Croatian products to India was valued at 39 million euros. According to the latest report from the Croatian National Bank, from 2001 to the last quarter of 2019, Indian companies directly invested 32.5 million euros in the Republic of Croatia, while Croatian companies invested 5.5 million euros in India. These figures clearly indicate that the market of the Republic of India, the third largest economy in the world, is still insufficiently known to Croatian exporters. Only a few domestic companies brave enough to accept the challenge of an unknown environment, vastly larger and highly specific, have entered the Indian market. “Indian,” Žigić stated, adding that the Club’s focus in the upcoming period will be on strengthening trade relations between Croatia and India with the aim of increasing the volume of direct investments in the economies of the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of India.
Ivica Žigić is a recognized expert in public relations and corporate governance, with a career achieved in positions such as Director of Corporate Communications at Croatia osiguranje d.d. and Hrvatska elektroprivreda d.d., procurator and member of the Management Board of the publishing house Profil, and advisor in the office of the President of the Croatian Chamber of Economy. He made his first contacts with India as a journalist for the Globus newspaper in 1998. He graduated in collaboration with the University of New Delhi and has maintained contacts with the Republic of India to this day, actively working on business connections between the two countries.
