Croatia plans to grant a licence for the third GSM mobile phone operator later this year, after setting up a new telecommunications regulatory agency, its Transport minister said on Tuesday.
Transport, Tourism and Development minister Bozidar Kalmeta also said he expected the 2004 tourist season to bring between 10 and 15 percent higher revenues than an estimated $8 billion in 2003, after improving local hotels and roads.
Four firms, three foreign and one domestic, expressed interest last year in becoming the third GSM operator on the former Yugoslav market of 4.4 million people.
"A new tender this year will show what the interest is now, but I believe it will prove there is room for another operator, he told Reuters in an interview. Kalmeta is a member of a new conservative government that took office in December.
Croatia's mobile market, with penetration of around 55 percent, is shared between national operator HT, majority owned by Deutsche Telecom, and VIPnet, owned by Austria's Mobilkom. The new operator will also be able to get a UMTS licence.
The price of a combined GSM/UMTS licence was set at 172 million kuna ($28.7 million). The price for UMTS only was put at 130 million kuna and that for GSM at 105 million kuna.
"But before calling a tender we have to set up a new regulatory agency, in line with the new telecommunications law".
Kalmeta said Croatia should soon get a second fixed-line operator, which will compete with the only current provider, HT. Kalmeta's predecessor revoked a licence granted to US-Croatian consortium Divan last October, citing procedural irregularities.
Divan, comprising local construction firm Ingra, New World Capital Corporation and US telecom equipment maker Lucent Technologies, has sued the ministry and a ruling in the case is still pending.
Kalmeta said tourism, the local economy's main revenue driver, would benefit greatly from a sell-off and overhaul of seaside hoteliers, mostly built by Socialist Yugoslavia.
"We have to speed up the lagging privatisation of hoteliers, which are in dire need of investment, to make our tourism more efficient," Kalmeta said, adding hoteliers planned to invest some 300 million euros ($383 million) in new facilities this year.
Tourism revenues help offset Croatia's huge trade deficit, which last year amounted to some $8 billion. Kalmeta said he hoped the current road-construction efforts would remove another major setback for tourism.
"This year we aim to build 177 kilometres of the highway between Zagreb and Split (southern Adriatic), with completion planned for the summer of 2005," Kalmeta said.
The overall investment in highway-construction works between 2001 and 2005 is estimated at 19.5 billion kuna, while investing a further 20 billion euros is forecast for 2005-2008.
"The pace will depend on our financial potentials, but we will certainly continue to look for resources in loans, road tolls and a percentage of retail petrol price," Kalmeta said.
He said the government will also try to secure funds to modernise the country's dated railroad network.