The objective of the Guide was to provide information material for foreign investors who might be interested in investing in Croatia. The inadequacy of promotional activity aimed at attracting capital from abroad is one of the reasons why Croatia has not yet managed to pull in any important greenfield investment, of the kind from which powerful positive spillover effects on the domestic economy could be expected. Reasons for stepping up promotional activities aimed at attracting foreign investment can be heard more and more frequently In the public economic and political debate, and it would seem that some institutional measures are also aimed in this direction.
One of the first steps in such an activity is the preparation of information material from which potential investors can obtain the first relevant items of information, such as the structure of the Croatian economy, the most promising and competitive branches of industry, basic information concerning the Croatian tax system and the system of incentives and reliefs, the administrative procedure for incorporating a firm, basic information about foreign currency operations and customs regulations, data concerning the availability and costs of labour, infrastructure, potential manufacturing locations, contacts in the key institutions of central and regional government. This kind of manual is particularly important for appealing to SMEs that do not have large analytical departments that would be able to collect all relevant information on the potential manufacturing locations.