Speaking to the press after a government session, Grcic said the figures showed that 2012 too had been a year of crisis and of a second recession bottom.
The government will try to reverse those trends, notably in the second half of this year, by implementing a strategy relying on fiscal consolidation, competitiveness reform, and growth.
As for the government's wrong predictions of GDP trends in 2012, Grcic recalled that last year projections for the European Union were corrected at least three times.
Europe had a 0.3% GDP downturn in 2012, which means that the unexpected happened. Croatia is not an island and could not have been left out of that, he said.
Grcic expects the negative trends to continue in this year's first quarter but hopes the decline will not be at last year's level.
We will probably be within last year's average and then, upon joining the EU and changing conditions for doing business and with some new sources of growth and development financing, I hope we will manage to reverse the trend, he said.
Grcic expects GDP to grow in the second half of this year and Croatia to wrap up 2013 above zero.
It would be the first time since 2008 that Croatia was above the EU average, because the EU predicts a zero per cent growth for this year, he said.
Speaking of the government's next moves, he said it "is launching new projects and defining new measures in various segments, from investments to reforms, on a daily basis."
What you heard in the IMF report yesterday are serious intentions and announcements of reforms in the country, he said, adding that to meet the IMF's calls for new cuts "isn't realistic."