I didn't mention, nor did I refer to any issues, so whatever you are stating here is none of my concern, nor does it have anything whatsoever to do with anything I wrote about, nor does it have anything whatsoever to do with me.
I also did not talk nor did I write about any efficiency of any public system, so that does not concern me or what I wrote about either.
"If the banking sector is corrupt - there can be no real economy."
There is no economy in Croatia; it has very little industry of any significance, with tourism being the only significant influx of funds into the country.
"Mortgages enable people to spread payments out over time and are a fundamental artifact of affordability."
SIGH Sir, how do I explain this? You are so deep into classical economy thinking, whereas the reality in Croatia is one of tribal mentality. People take on debts from friends and family, and nobody worries about making payments the way you understand them, because the money owed is paid back in cash, with physical bills, in person and in one lump sum. Cars, condominiums, houses... it has always been this way in Croatia, for hundreds of years, and will be that way for a very, very long time, possibly the next hundred years, if not longer. It's Croatia: that is the only way that people there were able to come up with which functions reliably. Ergo, nobody gives a flying fuck about a mortgage over there, that's just something one reads about on the InterNet. No Croat will trust themselves to apply for one after all that corruption, and even if one did, nowadays the banks are reluctant to lend money to consumers. So the chances of both parties coming together to consume a financial transaction are zero. It has effectively become a cash only economy, and even though kuna has been a stable currency for almost three decades now, every Croat will convert their excess cash (which they hide at home) into euros, cash again, the first chance they get.
When a Croat goes to buy a car, he or she will literally walk around with a small sport bag full of physical currency. There was a period of people going deep into debt with consumer credit to buy cars, of course that has failed spectacularly with most being unable to service their debt, so things are back to the usual - cash.
When a Croat goes to buy a house, he or she will literally walk around with a briefcase full of stacked bills.