74 PERCENT OF YUGOSLAVS DESCRIBE CROATIAN PRODUCTS POSITIVELY

ZAGREB, June 5 (Hina) - The Yugoslav market has an optimistic stance towards products from Croatia, 74 percent of Yugoslav citizens a positive gave assessment "excellent, very good or good" for Croatian products. #L# This is the result of research presented today, carried out by the GfK Centre for market research in April (in cooperation with the SMMRI research company from Belgrade) for the needs of a group of Croatian manufacturers and the Croatian Chamber of Commerce. Out of the 1,387 people questioned, 34 percent described Croatian products as excellent or very good, 40 percent as good and 17 percent gave the description "nothing special or bad". Those questioned explained their views, whereas 74 percent of them stated Croatian products were of high quality, 64 percent said they were well packed, 48 percent said the products were modern, and 40 percent stated Croatian products were better than their home produtcs. At the same time two negative claims which stand out are that 68 percent of the questioned deem Croatian products worse than products imported from other countries, while 48 percent of them said they were too expensive. The best known Croatian products are those from factories Kras, Podravka, Gavrilovic, Koncar, Pliva, Franck, Saponia, Badel, TDR, etc. The research results, the increasingly better trends in trade with Yugoslavia and the recent exceptionally successful appearance of Croatian companies at the Novi Sad agricultural fair and the Belgrade technology fair, all indicate how important the Yugoslav market is for Croatia, director of the trade sector at the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, Rudjer Friganovic, said. In the first three months of this year Croatia exported US$40 million worth of goods to Yugoslavia (four times more than in the first three months of 2000), while imports from Yugoslavia grew from four to twelve million dollars. (hina) lml sb