Deputy Prime Minister Grcic: Government spares no effort to keep the young stay and work in Croatia

Deputy Prime Minister Branko Grcic on Sunday posted on his official Facebook page figures provided by the national statistical office (DZS) and the European Union's statistical office (EUROSTAT) on migrations in Croatia

"Any departure of Croatians from their homeland, even if it is on a temporary basis, is an issue and a loss for Croatia. I also underscore that continuous attempts by the Opposition to assure the public about dramatic statistics of 100,000 Croatians having left Croatia in the last two years are groundless," Grcic said.

He also notes that in the 2004-2014 period, the number of migrants moving into Croatia was higher by 10,214 than those who left the country, which makes Croatia one of the few central and eastern European countries with a higher number of immigrants than emigrants.

He corroborated this by figures showing that in the said decade, a total of 128,716 people moved into Croatia, while 118,502 moved out.

A strategic goal of the current government is to enable as many young people as possible to keep living in their homeland. The strongest instrument to achieve that goal is the recovery of the economy and job creation, he wrote in his post.

Grcic said that currently out of 261,000 job-seekers registered by the Employment Agency (HZZ), 76,000 are those under 29 years of age. In the first six months of this year, of those who found employment, 44.9% were young people, that is 60,140 young Croatians were employed in H1, according to Grcic.

On the other hand, the opposition Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) on Sunday continued criticising the government, with HDZ two officials --Gordan Jandrokovic and Davorin Mlakar -- accusing the authorities of manipulating the statistics to delude the public into believing that the state of affairs is better than it it is.

(Text: Hina)

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