The majority of entrepreneurs in Croatia (76 percent) consider the business climate in the country to be bad, showed the latest survey conducted by the Croatian Chamber of Economy (HGK), and presented on Wednesday at a conference on the business climate in Croatia.

Some 23 percent considered the business climate neither good nor bad, and only 1 percent considered it to be encouraging.

The areas where entrepreneurs saw the greatest obstacles were legal security, primarily due to frequent changes in regulations, the judiciary, where the problem is the length of proceedings, and tax obligations.

Out of more than 750 entrepreneurs surveyed, 53 percent considered the business climate in 2017 was unchanged compared to 2016, 31 percent considered that it deteriorated, while 16 percent considered there was some improvement.

The largest improvement was seen in the communication with the public administration.

Legal security was seen as the main obstacle in the last year’s survey too, and this year it was given an even poorer mark.

Entrepreneurs were asked to rate each problem on a scale from zero to five, with five being the worst score, and legal security was given a mark of 4.22, whereas last year it was given a score of 3.53.

Head of HGK, Luka Burilovic, said the situation was changing, but not fast enough, and that last year they had expected a lot from reforms. Unfortunately, most of the reforms announced were halted or slowed down, primarily due to the crisis in the struggling conglomerate Agrokor.

Burilovic said this year had to be a turning point and that reforms had to be intensified. The growth rate of 3 percent was good, he added, but not enough.

“If we want to achieve what we want, we have to be more ambitious and an optimum growth would be about 4 percent to 5 percent,” Luka Burilovic said.