- Published: 13.04.2015.
Hajdas Doncic: There's no formal government guarantee for Zagreb Airport
The Minister of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure, Sinisa Hajdas Doncic, said on Sunday that there was no formal government guarantee for the concession to a French concessionaire for Zagreb Airport.
Hajdas Doncic made the statement while speaking to the press during a visit to Kostel near Pregrada, about 50 kilometres north of Zagreb. When asked to comment on the latest media reports that the granting of the concession for Zagreb Airport and the construction of a new terminal by a French investor on the basis of a public-private partnership (PPP) had increased the deficit of last year's budget because the government was implicitly a guarantor, the minister said that in all EU member states the ministry of finance issued such guarantees.
He said that everyone knew this because all the documents were made public after the verification procedure. He also said that there was a "direct agreement" signed by the concession grantor, the banks and the concessionaire and that it had not been treated as a government guarantee before.
"Not even now is it treated as a government guarantee, and this is so, to say the least, because of the sloppiness of the National Bureau of Statistics and the provision of data to Eurostat for purposes of the new methodology. They quantify it as a deficit. My question is: What is then the size of the deficit of France or Great Britain where most projects are marked as public-private partnership projects?" Hajdas Doncic said, noting that the airport terminal building would remain in the ownership of the Croatian government after all. He said that that was why a direct agreement was signed and that there was no direct guarantee.
When asked if that added to the deficit and what the European Union would say about it, Hajdas Doncic said that Deputy Prime Minister Branko Grcic and Finance Minister Boris Lalovac would explain to their counterparts in the European Commission what it was about.
Grcic and Lalovac are travelling to Brussels this week to present the reforms the government is undertaking to Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici.
"This is not just about the inclusion of the Zagreb Airport project in the overall state deficit but also about certain projects dating from 1998, such as BINA Istra. My question is: how will the Juncker initiative become operational in September if the classification of PPP projects remains the same as in 2010. It will be impossible. The Commission should change that and so should we," Hajdas Doncic said. He said that it was not in Croatia's interest, just as it was not in the interest of France or Great Britain, that direct agreements were included in the deficit and that that would be untenable.
"If the European Commission President wants his plan to take hold, he will have to change some of the statistical rules in the course of the summer and autumn, or none of the concessions will make sense," Hajdas Doncic said.
When asked if the complaint by the bidder Skladgradnja and Austria's Strabag would temporarily halt the construction of a bridge between the mainland and the island of Ciovo, off Trogir, the minister said that according to his information the construction project was going ahead. He said that it was a dispute between the Administrative Court and that it was not a dispute by the bidder against the state-owned road operator Hrvatske Ceste but against the State Commission on Public Procurement.
(Hina) vm