Government Scraps Plans to Lease Nation’s Motorways

The Croatian government has scrapped its plan to lease out the nation’s state-owned motorways…

The government last year engaged a consultancy firm to assess monetisation possibilities for the motorways due to the large debt the state-owned company operating them are in. A tender 30 to 50-year tender was proposed for a concession on the sections; Bregana – Zagreb – Lipovac, Zagreb – Split – Ravca, Zagreb – Rijeka, and Zagreb – Gorican. The government however have now backtracked on that plan after public resistance.

“We all know with how much resistance the debt monetisation plan was met, it was said that we were selling off our national assets. I still don’t agree with such statements. But now we have turned to the option of offering the motorways only to domestic pension funds and citizens,” Prime Minister Zoran Milanović said, adding that the state budget would be freed from loan liabilities under that option.

“The entire amount would have been paid by citizens through road tolls and petrol excise taxes over the next 25 years. This way, all financial obligations would be taken over by the investors, namely pension funds,” he said.

Milanović earlier stated that the state-owned motorway operators were in debt to the tune of over 4 billion euros.