INA

The government stressed the need to create new jobs and reduce unemployment, and for demographic renewal - which it was planning to assist by offering financial compensation to parents of newborn children.

With war still ongoing in Syria, plans for Croatian energy company INA to regain control over the gas and oil fields it partly owns in the country are viewed with some doubt by a leading expert.

Former general director of INA Davor Stern told BIRN that it is hard to say if regaining control over the fields is physically possible.

Croatia's planned purchase of the shares of the national energy company INA from the Hungarian energy company MOL is bound to increase Croatia's public debt, an economic analyst told BIRN.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Christmas Eve that purchasing MOL's share of INA - 49.1 per cent of the shares - can be done without enlarging the public debt.

Voters in Croatia are going to the polls on Sunday to take part in the second parliamentary elections since November of last year, with no party heading for an outright majority.

There are 3.8 million eligible voters in the country who can cast ballots to elect 151 MPs, out of which eight are for national minorities and three to Bosnian Croats and the diaspora.

Two state projects to explore and exploit gas and oil in Croatia are on hold until the new government prepares everything for the signing of contracts with foreign companies.

Croatia's energy company INA said it will "closely monitor" the situation in Syria after the governor of the Syrian province of Homs urged the company to return to the oil fields it owns in the region.

Croatia's new Foreign Minister, Miro Kovac, has made his first official visit to neighbouring Hungary, with which Croatia has had troubled relations in the recent past.

Ivo Sanader, the former Croatian Prime Minister, will leave custody prison in Zagreb after posting bail, following a Supreme Court ruling passed on Thursday.

Zagreb County Court on Wednesday indefinitely extended custody of former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader.

His lawyers had filed a plea for him to be released from custody lasting almost four years.

Sanader has received a nine-year jail sentence in a first instance ruling for using private marketing companies to siphon off public funds from state institutions and bodies.

Zagreb county court has scheduled the start of Sanader's retrial for September 7 on charges of abuse of office, war profiteering and bribery.

Sanader's eight-and-a-half-year sentence was revoked by the constitutional court on Monday due to procedural errors.