The assets of pension funds in Croatia reached nearly 94 billion kuna (€12.7 billion) at the end of April, and are expected to exceed 100 billion kuna (€13.5 billion) by the end of this year, Labour Ministry's official Majda Buric said on Monday in a parliament debate on a bill of amendments on compulsory pension funds.

The total assets controlled by the four privately-run compulsory pension funds at the end of 2017 amounted to 91.9 billion kuna (€12.4 billion), which is 9.5 percent, or around 7.7 billion kuna (€1 billion) more than at the end of 2016, according to figures presented by the pension funds association (UMFO) in February.

On April 30, the data released by the Croatian financial services regulator Hanfa showed that a total of 1.86 million people paid contributions into the four compulsory pension funds in Croatia at the end of March 2018, which was 65,000 more than a year before, and that the assets of those four funds have reached 93 billion kuna (€12.6 billion).

During the parliament debate earlier on Monday, opposition MPs slammed the proposed pension reform presented recently by Labour Minister Marko Pavic. They also insisted that Pavic should appear in Parliament to elaborate his ideas.

After the initial proposal has sparked heated debates over the past few days, Minister Pavic said earlier on Monday that only an outline of the future pension system reform was made, as a starting point for discussion within the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and among its coalition partners, as well as within the relevant task force, and that only after that a blueprint of the reform would be put forward to everybody.

(€1 = 7.38 kuna)

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