Finance Minister Zdravko Maric said on Thursday wholesale drug suppliers were owed a record HRK 6 billion, and that the health system's liabilities totalled HRK 12.5 billion, adding that the debt for medicines could not be settled only by injecting funds.

“Evidently, a lot more will have to be done for the system’s financial viability, not just on the revenues side of the state budget, but the expenditures side as well,” he told the press. “We can’t solve this problem by constantly pumping additional funds into the health system.”

More than HRK 2 billion was paid to drug wholesalers from the state budget at the end of last year.

“That’s not a new problem. We have done a lot on the revenues side of the budget to increase outlays for health by increasing the health contribution, through periodical injections, and every saving we made in recent years we put into the health system, yet we see the results.”

Drug wholesalers have said that the debt for medicines will exceed HRK 6 billion on 1 March and that it grows HRK 20 million by the day, announcing that from March they will cut deliveries to hospitals which do not service their debts.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)