Milanovic: I won't let INA become shopping mall for foreign fuel

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said on Wednesday that Croatia needed to preserve its oil refining capacity, stressing that he would not allow the national oil company INA to become "a shopping mall for the sale of imported sweets and foreign fuel."

The prime minister made the statement during Question Time in Parliament after independent MP Mladen Novak asked him how the government intended to preserve jobs in Sisak and Sisak-Moslavina County. Novak noted that the Sisak refinery had resumed operating on Monday and had oil stocks for the next 40 days, adding that such a "start-stop" way of operating would eventually increase the cost of production and have a negative effect.

"I'm not accountable for what happened before, either for business or criminal decisions and arrangements, but we must preserve the refining capacity," Milanovic said in response.

Valter Boljuncic of the ruling Istrian Democratic Party (IDS) asked Finance Minister Boris Lalovac if it was possible to step up the pre-bankruptcy settlement procedure for Uljanik TESU, a state-owned company where workers have not been paid four monthly wages, and whether the company would be privatised, given that the Uljanik shipyard has expressed an interest in it.

Lalovac said that Uljanik TESU had a huge amount of accumulated debt and that its management should have launched pre-bankruptcy settlement proceedings sooner. "Now it's up to the management to step up the process of document preparation and restructuring so that we can see what can be written off. If we have a strategic partner, the Ministry of Finance will certainly support this plan, and if we don't, then the survival of the company is questionable," the minister said.

Nada Turina-Djuric of the ruling Croatian People's Party (HNS) asked Transport Minister Sinisa Hajdas-Doncic what the government would do to ensure quality Internet access in rural areas. The minister said that the government had sent a programme to the European Commission under which the government would ensure Internet access in so-called white zones, in which commercial operators have no interest, through the company "Odasiljaci i veze" (Transmitters and Communications). He noted that it would be an aggregation network that would make it possible for all operators to use that infrastructure.

Hajdas Doncic said that in that way the government was protecting national interests, noting that the VIP telecoms operator was recently acquired by a Mexican company. "There is great turbulence and the government must protect national interests here," he said.

(Hina) vm

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