"Generally speaking, companies are not national resources but stockholders associations which are trying to make as much as possible on the market," Milanovic said asked to comment on an invitation for bids for the privatisation of Croatian Postal Bank and the Croatia Osiguranje insurance company which Finance Minister Slavko Linic announced earlier today.

Milanovic told reporters in the southern Bosnian town of Mostar where he is on an official visit, that the Podravka food company would become a modern shareholder company.

The state also holds a 45 percent share in the INA oil company, Milanovic recalled adding that the government was protecting national interests on the one hand and on the other the companies were fighting over profit. "This isn't a conflict of interest, but a certain internal animosity. On the one hand you are an administrator and a manager and on the other you are a stakeholder. INA is a joint stock company and in joint stock companies there are no national interests," Milanovic said.

We need to keep the monopoly over fundamental resources such as waters, forests, coast, everything else is market on which strict EU mechanisms apply, the PM said.