No matter how banal the dilemma may sound, it is not easy and simple to answer the question of whether it makes sense to continue to worry about the prices of various products in Croatia. On the one hand, we are already a bit boring to each other when we recount in the poses of shocked consumers in disbelief that for example - for some bizarre reason this year it turned out to be a general reference and comparative landmark in that context - a scoop of ice cream in Dubrovnik fetched up to five EUR in some places . Or that a pancake on Krk - nothing special, but one of my personal favorites when it comes to this topic - can cost as much as six EUR, as I witnessed firsthand.
On the other hand, accepting such a state of affairs as a new socio-economic reality would mean agreeing with the thesis that a kind of psychological effect is at work on this occasion, a transitional state of adjustment to the new currency, which of course cannot satisfy us as an explanation.
Roughly, the providers of products and services examine the psychological limits of customers and consumers, test how far we are willing to go, that is, pay, and then risk very high prices. Although it is clear to all of us, you don't need to be an economic expert for these things, that the prices we witness and live with are in conflict with every rational economic-market calculation, basically tailored from production costs, taxes and margins, and profits. As much as it seems, it could not have turned out much differently in the circumstances of the catastrophically bad political decision on the issue of setting the date for the transition to the euro - at probably the worst possible moment for it, in the conditions of high inflation that was at its peak in the EU at the time, and especially in its periphery, where Croatia settled for a long time - that is not necessarily the case.
It also seems that many people still do not understand that the euro is not a single European currency, but that there are as many versions of it as there are national economic and financial systems in the EU. In the political-economic circumstances of elementally driven tourism, and the leading and most valuable state industry without a clear mid-term and long-term national strategy in Croatia, it is not unusual that on the micro-levels of its immediate everyday reality, each of the involved protagonists does what they want and can. Of course, in the name of the free market and the principle of choice.
Can and should I then be surprised when an elderly married couple in Pelješac wants to sell me oysters for five EUR per piece? They settled in an unremarkable byte just off the road that looks like a flower shop where the immortal Number One dines. They placed a couple of rickety tables and chairs next to it. They are just a step away from the sea, which serves them as a field from which they extract shellfish to dry. They do not accept bank cards, fiscal accounts are unknown to them. But their prices are in the range of delicacies in a first-class restaurant. People are living the Croatian dream.
(portalnovosti.com)
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