​Gov't puts forward bill on unappraised land to facilitate greater investments

The government on Thursday sent to the parliament for a first reading a bill on unappraised construction land whereby it wants to regulate ownership of the land that has not been entered into the equity of companies set up during the ownership transformation and privatisation process to facilitate new investments, notably in the tourist sector.

The enactment of the new law is expected to facilitate investments worth between 2.5 and 3 billion euro.
 
The existing law on the land for tourism purposes was adopted in 2010, however, its inexplicitness and vagueness of some sections have made its implementation difficult.
 
For instance, land for tourism purposes is not considered the property of camping sites and land around hotels is not treated as part of their stock capital and is treated as unappraised land owned by the state.
 
In some cases, companies running camping sites or hotels use unappraised land free of charge, while, on the other hand, the fact that they are not owners of that land precludes them from getting necessary permits to further upgrade their property or build new structures on that land, which hampers new investments.
 
According to some estimates, these entangled ownership relations cause the state budget damage in the amount of 2-3 billion kuna annually.
 
Under the new law, land for tourism purposes owned by local government units and state-owned land at camping sites would be leased out to hotels and the owners of camping sites, and the new law also includes the possibility of selling those lots to the lessees.
 
Camping sites on islands would be entitled to benefits such as a 10% discount on the lease, four-star camping sites would be given a five-percent discount and five-star camping sites would get an additional 10% discount on the lease.
 
State Assets Minister Mario Banozic has said that there are 76 camping sites where the state owns 90% of a total of 14.1 million square metres of land. (Hina)

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