The Croatian government will at its session on Wednesday invite bids for consultants in the privatisation of the Hrvatska Postanska Banka, that is the Croatian Postal Bank whose whose abbreviation is the HPB, Finance Minister Slavko Linic said on Tuesday while participating at a forum at the VERN polytechnic in Zagreb
"We do not want to sell the HPB to foreigners, and we want to find an investor here in Croatia so that the HPB may stay in the Croatian hands but no longer being owned by the state," the minister said,
"The government is aware that some "pundits" will accuse it of selling the family silver. However the HPB is a small bank with high interest rates and who needs such a bank," he said adding that the government is seeking a partner who will help the bank to develop and grow.
The head of the Institute of Economics, Sandra Svaljek, who was one of the authors of the previous government's Economic Recovery Programme which also envisaged the privatisation of the HPB, today supported the incumbent government's plan to sell that bank,
Linic said that the government would soon acquire a 38-percent stake in the ailing petrochemical company Dioki, which used to be a big exporter.
Earlier in the day, Dioki's disgruntled workers, who have not received salaries for months, held talks with government officials on the company's problems.
