ZAGREB, Feb 26 (Hina) - The main topic of this year's Entrepreneurs Day, organised by the Croatian Employers Association (HUP), is export as the generator of growth and development of the national economy.
ZAGREB, Feb 26 (Hina) - The main topic of this year's Entrepreneurs
Day, organised by the Croatian Employers Association (HUP), is
export as the generator of growth and development of the national
economy. #L#
Business people, government officials and experts discussed in the
open part of the conference ways to encourage the country's
development by boosting exports.
The conference, which gathered some 400 participants, is divided
into three topics - "From Ideas to Projects", "From Projects to
Products" and "Conquering Markets". It was stated that the key to
economic development lay in investing into knowledge as the basic
production factor.
Presenting a programme of Croatia's innovation technology
development, Assistant Science and Technology Minister Miroslav
Cavlek said that almost a hundred papers were published per one
registered patent. In the past year and a half, 137 projects have
been financed within two sub-programmes and some 30 new ones are
being prepared, he said.
Participants in the conference were also informed about a programme
which should help identify human resources which can produce
marketable results.
The participants were acquainted with the example of Finland and
its association of technology parks, which gathers some 20 parks
with 1,700 companies and 15,000 experts and service providers.
Every technology park is of a different profile and Finnish
representatives at the conference said that their business policy
was based on building a network involving all factors, and less on
partial measures and sporadic interventions.
Italian representatives spoke about the experience of nine
industrial clusters as a possible solution for some branches of
economy in Croatia. One of the best solutions in Italy is a cluster
of ceramic factories which today makes 10 billion dollars worth of
export and accounts for 30% of the international production, they
said. Another example from Italy is corporate financing through
Confidi, which acts as a guarantor of small and medium-sized
companies towards banks.
The Minister of Crafts and Small and Medium-Sized Businesses,
Zeljko Pecek, said that last year innovators were given incentives
in the form of 116 grants. He added that 17 products had been
prepared for production and three new production procedures had
been introduced. A programme of commercialising innovations has so
far included the granting of 70 loans, worth 70.4 million kuna (9.26
million euros), while this year's loans total 411 million kuna
(EUR54.07 million), he said.
The minister said that entrepreneurs had been granted 4,897 loans
so far, totalling 3.3 billion kuna (0.43 million euros), while 108
grants had been given to entrepreneurs as incentives.
(hina) rml