In recent years Croatia has drawn too little money from the European Union's pre-accession assistance programmes and from loans offered by European development and investment banks, it was said at the Croatian government's meeting in Zagreb on Thursday.
From 2007 to 2011, a total of 668 million euros from the IPA programme was available to Croatia, and it managed to conclude contracts on the use of 276 million euros, or 42 percent of the available allocation, and only EUR 138 million or 21 percent was absorbed, the Minister of Regional Development and EU Funds, Branko Grcic, said.
A report of the supervisory board in charge of monitoring the implementation of IPA programmes has detected serious problems in some segments, notably in the preparation of projects in a timely and proper fashion in order to draw money from those funds, the minister said, announcing that the government would hold a session focusing on this issue next week.
As for projects financed by loans from the Development Bank of the Council of Europe, the European Investment Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Finance Minister Slavko Linic said that the government could not be satisfied with the speed and efficacy in drawing those funds.
For instance, 18 million euros was available for the development of urgent medical care, but only 36 percent of that money was absorbed. Only 18 percent of 60 million euros of funds intended for the protection of coastal areas against waste water pollution was absorbed, and 28 percent of 25 million euros intended for the modernisation of the Croatian tax administration, the finance minister said.
Not a penny was taken from a 34-million-euro loan for the Dina Petrokemija company. Of 250 million euros available for the financing of small and medium-sized businesses, 121 million was drawn.
Owing to the "very slow" absorption of funds, the European Investment Bank threatened to penalise Croatia by charging it 10,000 euros plus 0.1 percent for any unused portions of loans, Linic said.
Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said that those figures were warning and although some problems could be ascribed to the initial disorientation in the past, the incumbent government would have no excuses for the poor absorption of future funds.
The government endorsed an evaluation strategy for European structural instruments for a period when Croatia would pass from IPA pre-accession funds to structural and cohesion funds.
Croatia currently has 150 million euros at its disposal, and after its accession to the EU, which is set for 1 July 2013, the amount will rise to EUR 450 million in the second half of 2013 and to one billion euros in 2014.
