Citizens health safety most important; wages and pensions guaranteed

The government will help the enterprise sector in countering the coronavirus outbreak by relaxing the approach to tax and contribution collection, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Thursday, stressing that wages and pensions will continue to be paid regularly.

"We will do all in our power to preserve jobs and liquidity and to relax the approach to tax and contribution collection by deferring payments and taking a more flexible approach to the dynamic of payments," Plenkovic said in his opening remarks at a regular cabinet session in which he spoke of measures to fight the COVID-19 epidemic.

He said that Croatia would help its economy by combining national and common European measures, for which the European Commission has set aside €25 billion, adding that Croatian companies would be able to count on a portion of that sum.

Plenkovic said that the sectors hardest hit by the outbreak were tourism and transport, notably air transport. He stressed that wage and pension payments were guaranteed because the Croatian public finances were in good order.

PM points out importance of quarantine for foreigners coming to Croatia

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Thursday spoke about the importance of restrictive measures including quarantine for foreigners arriving in Croatia from countries and regions hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

He said that foreigners arriving from China and Italy would be placed in quarantine for 14 days, adding that this measure was expected to deter a certain number of people coming to Croatia.

Plenkovic said that the latest developments in China gave hope that the pandemic could be contained.

He recalled that a few weeks ago "the situation in China was dramatic", while the latest figures showed that this infectious disease was abating now. A month ago, there were nearly 4,000 new cases positive for COVID in China on a daily basis, and now this number has fallen to 20 cases a day.

He said that the Croatian authorities had started closely following developments worldwide as soon as COVID-19 broke out in China.

With the situation in Italy worsening, Croatia has stepped up measures to curb the virus, the prime minister said, commending his ministers for keeping the public up to date on the situation.

Plenkovic urged members of the public to follow authorities' instructions on the coronavirus outbreak.

Text: Hina

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