Call us Croatia!

For emulating Indiana under Mitch Daniels, that is, as Croatia throws in the towel (or their highway department under the bus);

Croatia is to offer a tender to a private company to run the country's 1,017 kilometres of highways, currently managed by indebted state company Croatian Highways, HAC.

The concession will be offered to lease the highways for 30 to 50 years for an estimated price of 2.5 to 3 billion euro.

....The HAC will be downsized radically as a result. Its only remaining functions will be to monitor the future concession agreement. 

Necessity, mother of;

The leasing arrangement was effectively imposed by the European Commission after Brussels forbade the Croatian government from guaranteeing the HAC further loans.

From the early 2000s, with government support, the HAC invested 5.8 billion euro into Croatia's highway network.

Which are now worth 2-1/2 to 3 billion Euros. That's a little different from the situation in Indiana, where a toll highway thought to be worth less than $2 billion in net present value to Indiana, was leased for almost $4 billion six years ago. That $4 billion was put to use building more roads for Hoosiers to use.

Meanwhile in neighboring Serbia;

Serbia's Privatization Agency has announced a public tender for the sale of 502 of the remaining 584 social enterprises.

Again, to stop the bleeding;

Of 502 companies the government has offered for sale, as many as 63 are involved in manufacturing, 18 in agriculture, 21 in health and social care, 12 in construction, and 12 in financial activities. In order for these companies to attract investors, the Government is ready to write off their debts to the state, and it is about 2.4 billion euros.