The exporters' positions on necessary changes to the country's economic and monetary policies, which are to be discussed also at their convention on June 1, were presented by Professor Marijana Ivanov of the Zagreb Faculty of Economics, who said that export was the only potential that could help the country overcome the crisis.
The national economy has been marked for years by macroeconomic imbalances, which has led to an unsustainable level of public debt and a too great dependence on international capital movements and threatened the country's economic stability due to a huge dependence on imports and insufficient exports and unreasonable insistence on the stability of the foreign currency exchange rate, Ivanov said.
She said that the main purpose of the central bank (HNB) was to maintain price stability, which she said was not threatened, adding that the central bank's insisting on the exchange rate stability for years as one of its most important goals, was "the anchor that has kept the national economy in the troubled waters of crisis", particularly affecting excellent net exporters.
Instead of that, it is time for a more active role of the monetary authorities which should use all available measures, including depreciation, Ivanov said, adding that the issue of a too stable exchange rate could be solved by a controlled depreciation of the national currency of 2% annually over a period of five years.
Such a pace of depreciation would not threaten price or financial stability too much and would strengthen exporters' status very much, said Ivanov.
Both Ivanov and HIZ president Darinko Bago said depreciation would be harmful and unacceptable if not accompanied by other measures to compensate for possible negative effects, for example for citizens with loans tied to the euro.
An alternative to depreciation is the introduction of a privileged foreign currency exchange rate for exporters, similar to what banks have for their VIP clients, namely cases when profit is certain even with a lower exchange rate, she said.
The central bank has at its disposal numerous other measures which it is not using, said Ivanov, citing as examples the possibility of buying exporters' claims or investments in export-oriented production, granting selectively loans to banks and the Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development to give favourable loans to exporters, the purchase of government bonds from banks, and so on.
Bago said that the association did not expect support for its ideas either from the government or from the opposition in light of the coming parliamentary elections, or that its goal was to attack the HNB. Exporters hope for initiating a competent and responsible public debate which until elections should result in the most desirable measures of economic and monetary policy, so that the new government could start implementing them right after the elections, said Bago.
All those measures are designed to help exporters survive because export revenues are the only 'healthy' foreign currency revenues and the only way of overcoming the deep economic crisis, Ivanov and Bago said.