August the 29th, 2021 - There has been a record and entirely unexpected (when looking at previous predictions from various sources) Croatian GDP jump in the second quarter of 2021, some are even daring to say that the Republic of Croatia is ''out of the recession'' the global coronavirus pandemic forced it into.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes, the Croatian economy grew 16.1 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2021, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) said.
Although the CBS points out that this is the first growth after four quarters of decline, it is also the largest since 2016, and it should be taken into account that the performance of the economy is compared with the same period last year during which the spring ''lockdown'' continued for some time. It's also worth noting that the fall in Croatian GDP reached a record 14.4 percent, which illustrates the scale of the low base effect.
While according to seasonally adjusted data, the Croatian economy recorded annual growth in the second quarter, the quarterly Croatian GDP was down by 0.2 percent.
Croatian GDP growth in the second quarter of 2021 is the first after four quarters of continuous decline due to the global coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath. At the level of the whole of 2020, the economy fell by 8 percent, which is one of the biggest minuses in the entire European Union (EU).
The growth of the economy in the period from April to the end of June is a consequence of the increases across all components of Croatian GDP, with personal consumption/spending expected to be the highest.
Household consumption grew 14 percent when compared to a 0.3 percent minus in the previous quarter. Exports of goods and services jumped 40.9 percent year-on-year; with exports of goods up by 35.2 percent and services up by 56.3 percent on the wings of a good preseason.
The imports of goods and services also jumped by 30.3 percent. The imports of goods rose 30.5 percent and services rose by 28.9 percent. Of the other components that make up the Croatian GDP, gross fixed capital formation rose 18.3 percent year-on-year and government spending rose by 4 percent.
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