Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at the beginning of the cabinet's meeting on Thursday that the agreement on the debt-for-equity settlement plan confirmed by the creditors of the indebted food and retail group Agrokor was a huge achievement, adding that the company has positive economic prospects.

He added that everyone involved in the restructuring process of the company, including the state-appointed emergency administration, have achieved a huge success, and emphasised that the government had enabled the legislative framework for this 15-month long process during which the group survived.

The government had drafted and sent to Parliament a special bill, dubbed in the media Lex Agrokor, which was passed in April 2017 and which allowed state-appointed administration to temporarily take over the running of Agrokor in order to save it from bankruptcy. The administration’s legally mandated end of term is set to expire by July 10.

Plenkovic said that small suppliers and farmers that Agrokor owed money to achieved a 100 percent recovery rate for their claims, whereas Agrokor’s medium-sized and large suppliers were given back €500 million, with recovery rates for some of them around 60-70 percent or more. He added that the special law had given all of Agrokor’s daughter companies 15 months to be restructured and to be adjusted to new circumstances.

“The most important thing is that Agrokor now has economic prospects,” Plenkovic added.

This was one of the largest restructuring cases in Europe, and has been done in a relatively short period. The way it was done avoided a collapse of the local economic and financial systems, and any possible spillover of negative effects to the economies in neighbouring countries, he said.

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