The government never made a decision to withdraw so much as a penny from last year's profits of any of the 19 companies in majority state ownership, Finance Minister Ivan Suker said.
The government met to discuss the performance of the state-owned companies in 2004.
Suker said that those companies increased their investment in property from 16.4 billion kuna in 2003 to 17.6 billion kuna in 2004, adding that he was glad that this year they were investing even more.
Last year the state-owned companies generated an overall revenue of 40.6 billion kuna, with expenditure amounting to 38.7 billion; 15 companies operated at a profit and the total net profit was 1.8 billion kuna.
"This is a brilliant result. The public companies have turned to their internal reserves, they work more efficiently, and in many of them we have changed the management structure due to incompetence," Prime Minister Sanader said.
The largest net profit of 1.2 billion kuna was generated by oil company INA, followed by electricity company HEP with 439.2 million kuna and insurance company Croatia Osiguranje with 105.4 million kuna.
Four state-owned companies operated at a loss -- Croatian Railways (HZ), Croatian Post (HP), newspaper Vjesnik and marina chain operator ACI. Their overall loss was 315.4 million kuna (HZ - 175.4 million kuna, HP - 134.7 million, Vjesnik - 10.8 million and ACI 1.5 million).
(1 euro = 7.4 kuna)