February 23 (SeeNews) - Croatia has secured around 2.0 billion euro ($2.2 billion) under the European Union's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to finance digital transformation projects, prime minister Andrej Plenkovic said.
The government has drafted a proposal for a programme named A Way to the Digital Decade 2030 that includes steps for further digitalisation of government, public administration and society, Plenkovic said during a session of the national council for digital transformation, according to a government press release.
At the end of 2022, Croatia adopted a strategy for its digital development by 2032, and digitalisation is one of the country's four priorities for national development, along with decarbonisation, demographic upswing, and education, he added.
Plenkovic also said that some 63% of Croatian citizens have basic digital skills, above the current average for the European Union, and the aim is for the whole of EU to reach a rate of 80% by 2030.
Croatia needs to double to 100,000 the current number of its ICT experts to achieve digital transformation and the goals of the 2030 digital society development strategy, public broadcaster HRT quoted the president of the ICT association within the Croatian employers association HUP, Hrvoje Balen, as saying after the session.
($ = 0925 euro)