Slavonski Brod - potential international logistics center

Slavonski Brod is the largest city of Brod-Posavina County and the sixth largest city in Croatia, located at the crossroads of intercontinental and interregional transportation route connecting Central and Eastern Europe. Slavonski Brod was a major center and market town once, but today there are more different developed economic activities that are not fully exploited, such as a border river Sava which should be used for the formation of a logistics center. Projects for the creation of logistic center are prepared, the implementation of this type of center would increase the standard of living and increase employment in one of the least developed counties in the Croatian. There is an insufficient interest of the relevant institutions and administrative bodies for investment in inland transport infrastructure that would create the basic conditions for recognizing Slavonski Brod as the international logistics center. There are projects in the city that promote the interests for the development of the international port in it, but they are awaiting realization because of the lack of financial resources.Apart the port activities, it will contribute to investments in machinery and equipment of industrial plants which are waned by the advent of privatization. The aim of this paper is to analyze and determine the objective reasons for untimely implementation of projects which would help creating and strengthening the Port Brod, and provide measures and activities of relevant authorities for the affirmation of international logistics center in Slavonski Brod. Analysis of the problem and research objectives definition leads to two research objects. The first object of the research is Slavonski Brod, whose historical and current analysis of economic and logistics activities will determine the consequences of the current economic situation in the Brod-Posavina County. Another object of research is an international logistics center which should affirm Slavonski Brod with the proposed guidelines. During research of facts and possibilities that currently exist, for the formulation of the research results in this paper, the following research methods are used in a different combination: historical method, the method of analysis and synthesis, classification and description method.