Speaking at a conference "A day for great plans", Linic accepted the government's responsibility for the shortfall in reaching their forecasted growth of 0.8 percent for this year, claiming that the restructuring of public companies had started successfully, particularly in Croatian Railways, but that investments had not begun yet.

Our projections were not incorrectly calculated, however, the government hasn't managed to realise its programme to increase investments into the public sector, Linic said, adding that the 1.7 percent growth rate set for 2013 "has to be realised".

Croatia's greatest problem is the huge, incomprehensible imports. We import gas and oil products while INA makes insufficient investments . We have so much water yet we do not have hydro-power stations and therefore import electricity. Next year we expect the private sector to invest because these government investments will not be sufficient, he claimed.

The government will offer private companies certain subsidies and will on the most part, solve the problem of insolvency and tight cash flow.

The budget deficit will remain below 10 bln kuna and we will introduce a fiscal regulation to reduce the portion of budget expenditure in the GDP, Linic announced.

President of the Croatian Employers' Association Ivica Mudrinic claimed that a GDP growth rate of 1.7 per cent was not enough to employ more than 300,000 unemployed Croatians who were now out of work.