PM MATESA REPORTS TO HDZ SESSION

ZAGREB, Feb 25 (Hina) - Addressing the session of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) Central Committee Sunday, Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa outlined the following goals of the party's and government economic policy for the next decade: "Annual gross domestic product of 50,000 kunas (U.S. dlrs 9,300) per capita (in accordance to today's purchase power), creating 200,000 new jobs, substantial increase of investment into education and science. "We may say that it was exactly the HDZ which had offered a program to tilt the extremely negative trends in the national economy that had existed at the moment of creation of the state. "A successful realization of the economic stabilization program has reverted the dignity to the Croatian economy, Croatian companies and Croatian currency, both here and abroad," Matesa said, adding that the keywords were the macro-economic stability and stability of the currency. He pleaded for "a reasonable, well-balanced and economically acceptable protection of the domestic production, in order to facilitate the growth and restructuring" which was to be "materialized through a new customs tariff schedule." But the key precondition for increase of the efficiency and productivity was in technologic reconstruction, he underscored. Matesa also called for "a more aggressive approach of Croatian economic subjects to the foreign markets in which the state and the commercial diplomacy must have very specific tasks". "The Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development should be quickly enabled for crediting export businesses," he specified, adding that the goals would be hardly achievable unless "a thorough banking system rehabilitation is accomplished, along with decreasing the interest rates into a reasonable, economically acceptable frame." "The Croatian market is little and for most of our companies the question of new markets is the question of all questions," he said, adding that only aggressive and state-supported strategy can provide an effective approach to the markets. Matesa also said that "some simply refuse to accept the fact that the average (monthly) wage of 1,895 kunas was 64 percent higher than in 1992. It has doubled the 1993 average when workers' and pensioners' standard was attacked by the hyperinflation." (Hina) bk 251327 MET feb 96