Consequences of the recession also hit Hina and financial trends in 2009 led to the reduction by 17 percent of revenues from commercial subscriptions in 2009 on the year. In addition, public finance problems also affected Hina's results when it came to the collective subscription, Drpic said adding that the rationalisation of the business operations had been conducted in the company,
The loss was covered by the agency's reserves and capital. Hina orderly met its financial obligations and has no outstanding debts to its suppliers. Salaries and contributions are paid regularly and there have been no lay-offs, he said.
The reason for reduced revenues lies in the fact that due to the recession many users of Hina services have cancelled agreements with the agency, Drpic said raising the question why media in Croatia did not use Hina services.
According to him, media in Croatia cannot function without Hina which can be proved by the fact that almost all media that have cancelled business agreement with Hina use again Hina's news items and reports in their original form or in changed forms.
"This is also the evidence that Hina is invisible but is definitely needed and irreplaceable in the Croatian media sector," he said.
The Hina management has begun elaborating a programme for reorganising the agency. The aim of the restructuring of the agency is to confirm the character of Hina as an independent news agency and to create preconditions for long-term stable business operations, paving the way for new employment, Drpic said.
During 2009 and 2010, as part of its media monitoring project, Hina has fully implemented a semantic search system with its own resources, and this semantic search system for text analysis is the only one in the region, Drpic said explaining that users can now make this search in the Croatian language after this has so far been available mainly in the so-called big languages.
Informing the parliament that Hina was celebrating the 20th anniversary of its establishment, he invited MPs to attend a central celebration of this anniversary, set for 17 November.
According to the report, Hina releases 570 different news items and information in the Croatian and English languages through its different services around the clock.
Hina provides multimedia services and has its own photo service (FAH).