Agriculture Minister Tomislav Tolusic commented on Monday recent media reports that this year Croatia had drawn some 2.7 billion kuna (€363 million) less in EU funding than what had been originally planned, saying that the money available to Croatia should be absorbed by 2023.

Tolusic told reporters that tenders in farming have been called to spend some 85 percent of EU funding available, with 60 percent of the funds already signed for with contractors, and 30 percent of funds paid out.

“This year 4 billion kuna (€538 million) of the planned 4.5 billion kuna (€605 million) will be used in agriculture. I don’t think that’s a small amount… Although we still have time until 2023, we’ll try to contract and, hopefully, use all of EU funding earmarked for Croatia by 2020. Then we’d be fully ready for the next EU budget period,” Tolusic said.

He said that the absorption of EU funding in his department depended to a great extent on farmers themselves.

“Sometimes we can’t know exactly if they will implement their projects this month, or in three months’ time. We are at their disposal because we have ensured favourable loans with 0.1 percent interest rate… If they can’t finance their part, they can come to the Agriculture Ministry and we’ll do our best to help them absorb all the funds by 2020.”

Jutarnji List daily said today that this year the government would absorb 2.7 billion (€363 million) less than planned from European funds, citing figures from this year’s revised budget, which reduced the planned income from EU bodies from 13.6 billion kuna (€1.83 billion) to 10.9 billion kuna (€1.47 billion).

(€1 = 7.43 kuna)

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