ZAGREB, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Croatia plans to join the exchange rate mechanism (ERM-2) in 2020, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said here on Monday during a conference where the government and Croatian National Bank presented a strategy for joining the Eurozone.
"Croatia has two political goals -- to become a part of Schengen area in 2019 and to join the Eurozone," Plenkovic said.
"I don't want to bid with a date when we would like to introduce euro. We are going to try, and I think it is realistic to join ERM-2 in 2020, the same year as Croatia presides over the EU Council," he stressed.
The conference that all government ministers attended was the official beginning of a public debate about joining the Eurozone.
Plenkovic said that euro was a great opportunity for Croatia, but the country needed to prepare well. Citizens will feel euro in a very concrete and tangible way, he emphasized.
"We will not feel the effects of the oscillation of the kuna against euro and the interest rates on loans for citizens and entrepreneurs will be reduced. Joining the Eurozone will lead to higher foreign investments, easier price comparability and lower costs of the transaction, all of which will lead to GDP growth and citizen's standards," Plenkovic said.
The Prime Minister said he believed that joining the Eurozone wouldn't lead to higher prices because prices in Croatia have grown higher than in the Eurozone in the last 12 years. At the same time salaries in Eurozone countries have risen more than in Croatia.
According to Finance Minister Zlatko Maric, Croatia has to meet main economic convergence criteria: price stability, sound and sustainable public finances, exchange-rate stability and long-term interest rates.
Moreover, the government debt shouldn't be higher than 60 percent of GDP, while it's currently 86 percent in Croatia. Latest statistics show that there is a trend of debt fall, and Croatia has the largest decrease of debt to GDP ratio in EU.
