Historical overview of the development of the National Classification of Activities (NKD) 1994 – 2001

NKD is the national classification of all economic activities in the Republic of Croatia, and was prepared at the end of 1994 on the basis of NACE Rev. 1 classification of the European Union. It was introduced into the statistical system of the Republic of Croatia by the Act on the National Classification of Activities, (OG, 98/94) and the Decision of the National Classification of Activities (OG, 6/95), as the legal basis for mandatory application since 1 January 1995.

It should be emphasized that NKD, being used for purely statistical purposes as set out in Article 9 of the mentioned Act, cannot serve as a basis to determine the rights and obligations of legal entities or natural persons. NKD established the framework and guidelines for the overall process of transformation of Croatian statistics with the aim of harmonising statistical monitoring with European statistical standards and criteria.

At the beginning of 1997, revised versions of NKD were prepared (OG, 3/97 and 7/97), when its systematic implementation began. implementation in all statistical surveys of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.

NKD is a statistical standard that is, according to the Act on the National Classification of Activities, mandatory for the collection, entry, processing, publication and dissemination of statistical data of the Republic of Croatia. It is also a mandatory standard for the classification of business entities (legal entities and natural persons) as well as for keeping administrative and business registers of the Republic of Croatia.

NKD is not a general standard but only a statistical one, which means that its implementation cannot be required for non-statistical purposes.

For this purpose, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics issued the NACE-based Ordinance on the Classification of Business Entities (OG, 22/95). All business entities registered before 1 January 1995 were re-registered on the basis of that Ordinance. Also, business entities that started operating during 1995 were originally assigned NKD activities.The re-registration of business entities laid the foundation for the beginning of the statistical application of NKD in some statistical surveys as soon as in 1995, although its full application was mainly achieved during 1997.