Agriculture Minister Tomislav Tolusic said on Wednesday he expected the restructuring of Agrokor to end in a positive outcome, that debt settlement with the company's creditors are going well. He added that the company would be restructured, with new owners, and would continue to do business.

Speaking for the state radio, he said that at the time of last year’s Easter holidays, the shelves at Konzum, the retail chain owned by Agrokor, were empty, and the troubled company had its bank accounts frozen. Every segment of the giant food and retail group  – including the retail chain Konzum, as well as large farming companies like Belje or Vupik – was in a difficult situation, which was itself on the verge of bankruptcy.

“And today, everything is functioning normally, whether at Konzum, Belje, Vupik, or any other part of Agrokor’s business. Negotiations with creditors are going in a good direction, it’s something run by emergency managers. I expect the whole process to end in a positive outcome, that the company would be successfully restructured, with new owners, and that it would continue doing business in the sectors it is in, and that everything would be alright,” Tolusic said.

On the other hand, had the Lex Agrokor law on state-appointed emergency management not been passed, Tolusic said, some 60-70,000 or perhaps even 150,000 jobs would be lost, and the entire economy would have collapsed.

He added that the law, passed in April 2017, was a necessity, and that the Constitutional Court has later confirmed its legality. Tolusic said that in two or three weeks the law would also be passed in the European Parliament, which would make it part of the European acquis.

Tolusic said that as Agriculture Minister he was in contact with the former crisis manager at Agrokor, Ante Ramljak, as well as the current one, Fabris Perusko.

“Agriculture is an important part of this entire procedure The government must be kept in the loop with the entire procedure involving Agrokor,” he said, and added that he had made sure that small-scale farmers, all the family farms and small businesses to which Agrokor owed money would be paid in full.

“Those may not be large sums, compared to about 50 billion kuna of debt left by Agrokor’s previous owners, which destroyed the entire group. But we are talking about a large number of people (depending on it), and agriculture would have been threatened by it. Today people are normally doing business with Konzum or some other retail chains, things are working, and that’s a huge success,” Tolusic said.

He also talked about the new multi-annual financial plans for the EU and the planned reduction in funding for agriculture. Tolusic said that the funding couldn’t be the same as it was, due to Britain’s exit from the EU, dubbed Brexit.

The European Commission proposed in early May an increased budget for the 2021-27 period compared to the current 2014-20 budget, which includes a 5 percent reduction in funding for cohesion policies and agriculture. The proposed budget concerns the remaining 27 countries, as the budget is expected to lose €12-14 billion per year due to Brexit.

“Of course, the funding will be reduced. But the cuts will not be applied in a linear way to all member states. And that’s why I expect Croatia to do well, and without any large problems. I will do my best to avoid budget cuts foir agriculture on the national level of Croatia. However, if everybody loses 1-2 percent, I think that’s something we can certainly shoulder, we could re-distribute some of the funded but unused programmes and put them into measures that our farmers could benefit from,” he said.

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