No one can invest in Croatia as much as Russia can, neither the European Union nor the United States, but Croatia should first create the necessary preconditions, Russian Ambassador Anvar Azimov said at the Zagreb-Moscow economic forum on Monday.

Speaking at the forum, held as part of the Moscow Days in Zagreb event, Azimov said that Russia was prepared to invest several billion euros in Croatia, but that Croatia needed to show an interest and create preconditions for such investment.

He described Croatian-Russian relations and stable and friendly, saying that good political dialogue had been established and that relations in many areas were excellent, but that economic cooperation between the two countries was not so good.

“Our trade and economy are limping, and as ambassador I am not pleased with that. Neither am I pleased with the fact that Russian businesses have not recognised opportunities available in Croatia,” the ambassador said.

He said that according to his statistics, Russia exported EUR 700 million worth of natural gas to Croatia last year and that Russian gas was the most affordable for the Croatian market. He noted that the future LNG terminal on the northern island of Krk was not regarded as competition.

Speaking of Western sanctions against Russia, Azimov said that both Russians and the West were losing because of the sanctions, adding that Croatian partners were losing three or four times more. He said that Russia was interested in renewing ties with the United States and the European Union.

“We would like to be in harmony with our neighbours, and the EU is our neighbour,” the Russian ambassador said.

As for Croatia, Azimov said that it should not be afraid of any geopolitical plans and that Russians wanted to invest in the country. He said that Moscow had a budget of EUR 40 billion and that such potential should be tapped.

Azimov said that he would like President Putin to visit Croatia soon.

From 1993 until the third quarter of 2018, Russia invested EUR 410.9 million in Croatia, while at the same time Croatian investments in Russia totalled EUR 98.3 million.

The head of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK), Luka Burilovic, said he was pleased with the economic cooperation between Croatia and Russia, noting that it was not as it had been in 2014 when sanctions were imposed on Russia, after which trade was nearly halved.

“The last two or three years have seen continued growth and stabilisation of economic relations. We are slowly returning to the pre-2014 level. The Russian market is traditionally inclined to us, our companies have been operating there for many years. We have 20 Croatian companies registered in Moscow alone, as well as in many other regions there. The HGK is institutionally working on strengthening economic relations with Russians and there is a lot of potential for stronger ties. I hope this will be visible in the years ahead,” Burilovic said.

In the first two months of 2019, trade between the two countries increased by 132 percent from the same period in 2018. According to the HGK, last year Croatia exported $147.7 million worth of commodities to the Russian Federation while imports reached $450.9 million.

Also, over 122,000 Russian tourists visited Croatia last year, an increase of three percent over the previous year, while the number of overnight stays fell by two percent.

Sergey Cheremin, a minister in the government of Moscow, said he would like to see more Croatian companies in Moscow and more investors from Moscow in Croatia. He said that Moscow was the Russian Federation’s leader in attracting foreign investment and that its economy accounted for 20 percent of the Russian GDP.