What Happened With SDP’s Debt With The Church?

Although he did not specify the amount the Cabinet donated to the Church, Suker asked what is it with SDP’s debt with the Church.

Rumours that the Cabinet donated 70 million kunas to the church in a closed sitting intrigued the journalists who were at today’s press conference, summoned by HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) in order to summarize the accomplishments in the fiscal decentralization field. HDZ member Ivan Suker adeptly manage to avoid the journalists’ questions asking a counter-question about what happened with the coalition government's debt with the Church, estimated 251 million kunas.

- According to international contracts, we are in debt of financial help with the Church – Suker said and continued saying that the Church’s properties were the most frequent and dearest aim for Serbian aggressors, and these have not been restored after the war. He explained that nothing was done comforming to the law because it is about money from present reserves of the state budget. However, the HDZ member did not want to specify the exact amount which was given to the Chruch.

- Funds were given also in the past years, but statements about us insuring money to the Church for some business are false – Suker concluded.

Talking about fiscal decentralization, he reminded that last year HDZ changed the law on financing local self-administrations units, which turned out to be a good move. In fact, with such a distribution of the incomes of local self-administrations and the state, cities and municipalities earned 1.1 billion kunas until October of this year.

Suker denied all statements that the city of Zagreb lost around 700 million kunas due to this distribution, stressing that Zagreb earned at least 93 million kunas. I addition to this, the HDZ member recalled those mayors who are part of the other political options, and who point to such changes as negative.

- Velika Gorica, Koprivnica and Rijeka earned 46% more compared to the same time period last year – he concluded, adding that the biggest problem of the decentralization is unequal development, and that the right step to take towards the solution of these problems is a move by which the taxes on the incomes would remain in the local self-administration units.