"This bill facilitates the sale of state-owned forests, forest and farm land, and the coastal belt to a private owner if his project is labelled strategic", Labour Party leader Dragutin Lesar said in parliament.

He refuted claims that there was no interest to invest in Croatia.

"It's a lie that there is no interest to invest. There were offers made but investors that weren't from the EU were rejected, for example if they were from China, Russia, Singapore", he said, adding that he believed it was multinational companies and foreign banks that stood behind these obstructions.

He questioned what happens if a strategic project falls through, recalling that there had been cases when large foreign investors did not pay local sub-contractors.

A blind eye was turned to these investors and not one inspected them, he said.

Lesar also referred to the Zagreb Airport project which was awarded to a foreign company but for the investor to pay up, Croatia first has to provide a loan guarantee.

Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) MP Domagoj Milosevic said the bill will be a short-cut and that short-cuts often backfire.

He accused the incumbent government of not doing anything concrete in the past year and a half as far as investments were concerned, except to exert tax pressure which turns investors away.

MPs from the ruling coalition support the bill and said that situations like that with Ikea and the Srdj golf project above Dubrovnik, which took 16 and 5 years respectively to be realised, should never occur again.

"This bill is no short-cut but clearly defined procedures and a signal for interested investors that we are in a position to work concretely on projects, from idea to realisation, in the shortest and most effective way possible, Social Democratic Union MP Franko Vidovic said in support of the bill.