The two institutions issued statements in response to newspaper articles saying the government had granted access to the draft budget to the World Bank, but not to trade unions.
The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Croatia on Monday stated that its leader Vesna Dejanovic was told by World Bank officials during her recent visit to Washington that they had insight into the 2005 draft budget.
The World Bank has had no insight into the 2005 draft budget of the Republic of Croatia. It gained an insight into budget preparations from publicly available instructions on the drawing up of the 2005-2007 state budget, released on the Finance Ministry's web site, and from the government's document called the Principles of the Fiscal Policy for 2005-2007, which provides a framework for the budget in 2005 and the following two years, and is publicly available on the government's web site, the World Bank said in the statement.
The World Bank said that statements by the head of the World Bank office for Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, Anand K. Seth, and its expert on poverty reduction, Satu Khristina Kahkonen, about the negative effect of lack of social dialogue in Croatia bore witness to the openness of the World Bank to dialogue with all participants in social processes in the country.
The Finance Ministry said in its statement that the draft state budget for 2005-2007 was nearing completion, and that it would be presented to the public after it was adopted by the government.
The draft state budget should be forwarded into government procedure soon.