CROATIAN STABILIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICY IN THE 1990s

This study deals with the purpose and the different forms of programme arrangements with international fi nancial institutions. It deals with the principles and the meaning of the so-called financial programmes providing an analysis of the results of their general application, and especially with the role of the IMF and the World Bank in establishing Croatian economic policy. The final outcome of the study is a review and an assessment of the current state and future prospects of the Croatian economy as the long-term development implications of the structural adjustment policy that has been stipulated by the national government in coordination with the IMF and the WB. It is possible to outline a national development strategy based on the results of this analysis:
The strategy could be a stage approach to development : in the first
stage higher monetary sovereignty is necessary, and an export stimulating exchange rate; by means of an exchange rate policy and developmentally acceptable interest rates, consumption would in the beginning be restricted and then redirected towards domestic products; in that way export competitiveness would be supported by relative prices rules in accordance with the global productivity of the economy; a development programme of an exclusivelymicroeconomic orientation stipulated by the World Bank doctrine is not complete, and in certain segments it is one-sided and premature for the development moment of the Croatian economy; the stage of stability when short-term and long-term capital is prone to infl ow into the country will be a sign of beginning a mature stage of recovery and developmnet; in that stage the market mechanism will regulate development-stimulating interest rate;
this stage presumes a developed institutional infrastructure and developed mechanisms of the country’s fi nancial system.
The kuna appreciation policy i.e. the policy of stability on a misaligned
level of the kuna in the state of underemployment equilibrium, contradicts the industrialization of the country and imply an excessive tertiarization of the economic structure, which endangers the future external equilibrium, but also the optimal economic and employment structure. From these theories it can be concluded that the monetary policy, especially the exchange rate and fi scal policies, in its macroeconomic and microeconomic aspects, should be coordinated with the recovery and development policy and with the policy of stabilization and banking and foreign trade system liberalization.