Croatia will continue in June with job-retention measures for businesses affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and those in earthquake-hit areas, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

He said that from March 2020 through 25 May 2021, the state had set aside 10.5 billion kuna for job-retention subsidies, covering more than 680,000 workers in over 120,000 businesses.

Plenkovic said that despite the extraordinary circumstances caused by the pandemic, the number of Croatian Pension Insurance Institute insurees was twice as high as in 2019 and 2020, and that the average net pay was over 7,000 kuna.

“With further measures and activities, we will support the work and survival of our enterprises because employment and job retention is one of the most important priorities of economic development and recovery.”

“We can be extremely satisfied with the result the measures have yielded so far. The labor market is stable, there has been no disaster as many predicted, which shows that the government’s measures have succeeded,” Plenkovic said, adding that relief for enterprises would last as long as the pandemic.

(€1 = 7.51 kuna)