ZAGREB, May 29, 2018 - Croatia's industrial production unexpectedly fell by 1.3% in April 2018 compared with April 2017, and by 0.9% in comparison with March 2018, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (DZS) on Tuesday.
Of three economic analysts polled by Hina, two had expected industrial production growth of 2.9% year on year, while one predicted a decrease of 1.6%.
Since the end of last year, industrial production has been very unstable, falling in five of the last six months. During that period production rose only in February, by 3.3%.
"Relatively unfavourable trends in industry began in the last quarter of 2017. The indicator of business optimism in industry, which has been falling since March, also partly indicated a slowdown. Furthermore, the decline in demand for domestic products is also driven by the slowing of economic activity on Croatia's export markets," analysts at Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said in their comment on the DZS report.
In April 2018 compared with April 2017, production of capital goods fell the most, by 12.2%, while production of durable consumer goods declined by 4.4% and that of energy by 0.3%. On the other hand, production of non-durable consumer goods and intermediate goods increased by 3.8% and 1.3% respectively.
In the first four months of 2018, industrial production dropped by 0.1% compared to the same period last year. "This clearly shows that the economy, despite the solid growth of personal consumption, has slowed down slightly," RBA said.
Last year industrial production rose by 1.9%.
"The industrial production growth rate in 2018 will be slightly lower on average than last year's, reflecting the slowing of economic activity both in Croatia and in the EU," RBA said.
