Addressing the 4th international conference on family businesses, Maras said that in the present time of crisis family-run enterprises, particularly small and medium ones, have added value because they are closely connected within themselves and are ready to endure even greater strain than companies that are not so closely knit.
Maras said that his ministry has prepared quality programmes, that the Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development has already presented the most favourable loans on the market with interest rates of up to three per cent, and that all enterprises, including family businesses, will be able to get a state guarantee from the Croatian Agency for SMEs and thus obtain funding.
Professor Slavica Singer of the Osijek Faculty of Economics said that the government should design various policies and programmes specifically for family enterprises to help them deal with their specific problems. She said that there are no statistics about the number of family businesses in Croatia and their contribution to the GDP, only the figure that about 50 per cent of employees in Croatia work in family businesses.