This document provides an overview of Zadar County and the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014-2020. It describes Zadar County's population, area, and rural characteristics. It also outlines key issues with ICT and broadband access in Croatia, as well as challenges facing SME competitiveness. The programme aims to support SME growth and innovation through projects implementing e-business solutions and ICT to improve competitiveness and efficiency. The document concludes with a suggestion for more tailored policy support for rural SME business development and technology adoption.

1. Ana Zubčić
Counselor for International Relations and EU Funds – AGRRA
ana.zubcic@agrra.hr
Zadar County Overview
OP Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014-2020
18th of October, 2016Capacity Building Workshop

2. • Zadar County overview
• Operational Programme
Competitiveness and
Cohesion 2014 – 2020
• PA 3: Business
Competitiveness
• IP 3d: Supporting the capacity
of SMEs to grow in regional,
national and international
markets, and to engage in
innovation processes
• SO 3d1: SMEs' development
and growth improved in
domestic and foreign markets

3. 3
Zadar County
 The County of
Zadar is an
administrative
subdivision of the
Republic of Croatia
 It is one of seven
coastal Croatian
Counties and it is
located in the very
center of the
Croatian part of
the Adriatic coast

4. 4
Zadar County
 The county's area is 7,854 km² (6,4 % of the territory of
Croatia)
 3,646 km² is land
 The sea area of the County is 3,632 km²
 More than 300 smaller and larger islands (Zadar archipelago)

5. 5
Zadar County
 The population in the area of Zadar County according to
the 2011 census was 170.398
 Population density in Zadar County is 44,5 people/km²

6. 6
Zadar County
 210 out of 229 settlements in Zadar County are in rural
area
 92,8% of the territory is rural
 48% of the population lives in rural area

7. 7
Use of information and communication technolgies
Croatia
 ICT as a sector represents 4.2% of the total GDP
 2.2% of overall active population is employed in it
 Croatia will seek to implement the ambitious targets
set in the
Europe 2020 Strategy and
Digital agenda for Europe flagship initiative

8. 8
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 Broadband penetration and NGN coverage levels:
both lagging behind the EU average levels
 Fixed broadband penetration was 21.7% in January
2014 (EU average was 29.8% in 2013)
 In 2013, 63.6% of households in Croatia had Internet
access (EU average was 76% in 2013)
 Although Croatia has already achieved good basic
broadband coverage (97% of population in 2013),
total NGA network coverage in Croatia amounted to
only 33% in 2013, which positioned Croatia far behind
EU’s average NGA coverage of 62% in the same year

9. 9
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 Current level of NGA coverage is concentrated on few
densely populated areas of Croatia
 Considering this, significant number of households,
public administration sites, educational and health
care institutions, as well as small and medium
enterprises is unable to access the high-speed
broadband and use advanced IT services, thus
hindering uniform regional development in Croatia
and exploiting of socioeconomic benefits related to
the availability of NGA broadband networks

10. 10
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 At least 60% of Croatian population would not be
commercially covered by NGN infrastructure, due to
poor profitability prospects for NGN investments in
areas with lower population density
 In order to foster extension of NGN coverage to these
areas, public funds shall be used for support of
investments in NGN infrastructure (backhaul and
access portion of network), to complement private
investments by operators in white and grey NGN
areas

11. 11
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 In order to reach 100% national NGA broadband
coverage and close the existing and foreseen
coverage gap in unprofitable areas by 2020,
investments of up to €1.286 million are needed
 At least 29.8% of this amount is foreseen to be
covered by private investments from operators, while
remaining share of 70.2% shall be covered by public
support

12. 12
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 Detailed analysis of the Croatian public ICT sector
has detected deficiencies which mostly concern
inadequate and inefficient cost and investment
management in the ICT public sector
 Public ICT projects are mainly implemented by
individual state administrative bodies, without
systematic coordination or possibility to use common
resources while concurrently many systems have
small utilization percentages of the available ICT
infrastructure

13. 13
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 Public e-services in Croatia are to a greater extent
provided to companies than to citizens
 Citizens have fully available 50% of basic public
services via the Internet (in 2010), but compared to
EU-27, Croatia is below average (EU27 81%)
 Only 30.8% of citizens communicated with public
authorities through online applications in 2013 (EU-
27: 50%)

14. 14
ICT – main identified problems
Croatia
 Digital Growth Strategy will give direction for the
development of e-services, with a clear prioritization
and orientation to results and will elaborate incentives
aiming to increase the usage of eservices (e.g. faster
treatment of e-requests and cost reduction in
comparison to classical counter service delivery).

15. 15
Business competitiveness
SMEs
 99,7% of the total number of enterprises in Croatia
 68,3% participation in total employment
 51% of GDP
Croatia: “moderate innovator”
 SMEs innovation: 8% below the EU average

16. 16
OP Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014. – 2020.
Priority Axis 3:
 Business Competitiveness
Investment Priority 3d:
 Supporting the capacity of SMEs to grow in regional,
national and international markets, and to engage in
innovation processes
Specific Objective 3d1:
 SMEs development and growth improved in domestic
and foreign markets

17. 17
Specific Objective 3d1 – results to be achieved
 Implementation of modern information and
communication technologies (ICT):
creates the possibility for optimizing the functioning of
enterprises and affects directly the growth of
innovativeness and competitiveness of the economy
 The aim is to finance SMEs projects to deploy e-
business solutions

18. 18
Specific Objective 3d1 – results to be achieved
 Improving the competitiveness and efficiency of
enterprises through ICT
 Support to enterprises introducing and implementing
e-business solutions provided by ICT
 Supporting e-services creation and provision between
enterprises (B2B) and implementation of ICT
solutions
 Supporting initiatives aimed at digitalization of
business services and products

19. 19
Possible policy improvement
 Policy more incisive and tailor-made to support business
development and technological readiness of SMEs in
rural area
 Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Crafts: letter of support

20. Project’s media
Thank you!
Questions welcome