At the meeting held on Wednesday, December 20 2000, the Council of the Croatian National Bank, chaired by Governor dr.Zeljko Rohatinski, adopted the Financial Plan of the Croatian National Bank for 2001, decided on the introduction of the National Clearing System and made several other decisions acting in accordance with its authority.

The National Clearing System (NCS), which will start operating on February 5 2001, is an important step in the Croatian payment system reform. The NCS will enable smooth performance of interbank transactions, while reducing the system risk related to clearing of payments to the lowest possible level. With the existing Croatian Gross Settlement System, the NCS completes the infrastructure necessary for achieving the final goal of the Croatian payment system reform - transfer of all payment transactions and, consequently, of all accounts, from the Institute for Domestic Payments to banks.

To ensure an efficient start of the NCS, the CNB Council made several decisions creating technical preconditions for the functioning of the System. The most important decision is the one reducing the percentage of the minimum reserve requirement to be kept with the central bank from current 50 percent to 40 percent, for the purpose of ensuring a sufficient limit for bank transactions through accrual accounts in the NCSA. This decision - to be applied from January 8 2001 - will, as estimated, free-up 500 million kuna, thus enabling the increase of the aforementioned limit to around 2.7 billion kuna.

The CNB Council further decided that the maximum amount of the vault cash to be kept by banks, savings banks and savings and loan associations will be determined in future by these financial institutions, and not by the central bank, since cash operations are a part of their basic operations. The control of the maximum vault cash amount in banks and savings banks will be conducted by the Croatian National Bank and in savings and loan associations by authorized officials of the Finance Ministry.

At the Wednesday meeting, the CNB Council gave approval to Zagrebacka banka d.d. Zagreb for acquiring a majority stake in Universal banka d.d. Sarajevo, to the enterprise Strahinjcica d.d. Krapina for acquiring more than 10 percent of voting shares in Krapinska stedionica d.d. Krapina and to the Croatian Privatization Fund for acquiring 37 percent of voting shares in Hrvatska poštanska banka.

In addition, the members of the CNB Council agreed with the nomination of Mr. Ivan Stokic for president of the management board of Rijecka banka d.d. Rijeka and Mr. Borislav Perozic for member of the management board of the same bank, Mr. Stipan Pamukovic for president and Mr. Zeljko Skalec for member of the management board of Nava banka d.d. Zagreb. Also, the CNB Council approved the nomination of Mr. Slavko Durmis for member of the management board of Hrvatska postanska banka d.d. Zagreb.