A nation that wants to be competitive, lucrative, gets vaccinated without thinking twice, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic told a business forum organised in Zagreb on Wednesday by the Prsten association of entrepreneurs of Croat descent from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He noted the example of Malta where 80% of the population had been vaccinated and underscored that it was necessary to encourage those who who were Covid vaccine hesitant to get inoculated.

The fourth annual business forum organised by the Prsten association focused on opportunities and challenges to Croatia’s post-Covid economy.

Business community has to support effort related to inoculation

The Prsten society’s president, Ivica Nuic said that they strongly support the government’s efforts related to anti-pandemic measures and to creating conditions for jobs and liquidity to be kept and for the future plans and activities.

“More than 230 businesses, which are members the Prsten organisation, and the entire business community are interested in making sure that opportunities are used after this health disaster, in order to achieve recovery and economic growth,” said Nuic.

He considers that it is essential for the pandemic to be completely stopped because without a stable epidemiological situation, conditions cannot exist for the majority of industrial branches, particularly in tourism and services.

“The business community has to strongly support efforts concerning the inoculation of the population and to give its full support and contribution. On the contrary, we will be faced with a long battle to keep jobs and production capacities,” said Nuic.

He said that efforts such as allocating funds from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to the private sector, ensuring sufficient liquidity, investing in digitisation, developing  the 4.0 industry, boosting competitiveness, rationalizing business operations and a rational state administration will on the most part preserve jobs and make it possible to remain a legal competitor on a technologically demanding market economy.