Jan de Jong, a Dutch entrepreneur and an ex-pat living in Croatia, contacted the Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenković via Linkedin with an open letter, giving him reasons why Croatia should start issuing digital nomad visas.
The prime minister met Mr. de Jong and soon after their meeting he announced via Twitter, that Croatia would be one of the first countries facilitating the residency of “digital nomads”.
Mr Jong appeared on the program Druga Strana on Croatian National Television on the 3rd od November. He shared a clip from the interview on his Linkedin profile. In the clip, he elaborates the arguments he presented to the prime minister.
He pointed out how Croatia has a “first mover” advantage and the potential to become one of the first countries welcoming the digital nomads. This would, he says, bring the country free publicity, and market it as a digital nomad destination. A tourist country that opens its borders to 20 million tourists every summer should not have a problem to do the same for digital nomads, Jong points out.
When the host asked him how exactly would Croatia benefit from digital nomads if they are not paying taxes, de Jong explained:
“They would be spending their net income here, in Croatia. That is a lot of money because a lot of digital nomads earn above what an average Croatian person would earn and spend. My estimations are, if you would, for example, look at a country like Indonesia – Bali in particular – at any given time there are 50 000 digital nomads on the island. If we could get 50 000 digital nomads to be in Croatia – and that will not happen overnight – and if every single digital nomad would spend 10 000 kunas per month, we are talking about a 500 million kuna monthly cash injection to the Croatian economy” he explained.
Click here to check out the whole interview.