The principles of competitiveness, evaluating development and compulsory rotation are the best safeguard against corruption, Martina Dalic said in Veliko Trgovisce, where the party held a closed-door meeting.
She said the reform should be based on information technology as the fundamental mechanism for monitoring the work of the state administration.
Dalic said the HDZ did not want to disclose its economic programme at this moment because the situation in the state was rapidly deteriorating.
She and Domagoj Milosevic said the main principle of the programme was reforming everything that obstructed the development of enterprise, business, output and export as well as reforms of the state administration and the public sector.
"The state administration cannot be an end to itself and certainly can't be the main source of the poor enterprise climate in Croatia, as seen from competitiveness reports," said Dalic.
Milosevic said the government's measures to shorten the issuance of permits were not enough, adding that there was an "extremely anti-enterprise and anti-investment climate" in Croatia, "mainly because of rhetoric."
He said Croatia needed a different course, less taxes and "genuine support to the economy," and not "the sale of all state assets except waters and forests."