You might be surprised...
Croatia has always been a country of exteme contrasts in many areas. While some do excellently, others struggle immensely. A quick comparison between Dubrovnik and Osijek is all that is needed to make that point understood.
Owing to that fact, a lot is discussed and even more negativity is traded when it comes to poor towns, regions and counties across the country, mainly in Eastern Croatia where Slavonia is seeing an increasingly concerning number of its residents hop on buses to other European countries in search of a comfortable life and a living wage.
Newspapers and news portals, including TCN, frequently run depressing stories about the alarming demographic situation in the country, with particular emphasis placed on the large emigration taking place in continental Croatia, in the generally overlooked places that don't possess the same charm to big tourism money as the coast, particularly Dalmatia, does.
With all of that being said, and sadly, all of that also being painfully true, there are some places in the Republic of Croatia that aren't as interesting for the vast majority of portals and papers to write about or report on, and those are the cities, counties and regions which are doing pretty well despite all, and no, that isn't just in reference to Dubrovnik and Zagreb...
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of March, 2018, the municipality of Medulin in Istria, with revenues of 67.6 million kuna back in 2016, was considered to be the richest municipality in Croatia. In layman's terms, this means that Medulin's single total income was equal to that of the collective income of the 31 poorest municipalities across the country. However, now in front of Medulin lie the municipalities of Motovun and Funtana, also in Istria, which occupy 4th and 5th place with 14,320 and 12,846 kuna per capita.
According to Glas Istre, the Konavle municipality, otherwise Croatia's southernmost municipality which borders with neighbouring Montenegro, immediately follows Medulin, with an income of 66.2 million kuna, according to an extensive study on the realisation of the budgets of local and regional government(s) from the Zagreb Institute for Public Finance.
Their research, based on the data of the Ministry of Finance, showed that Sutivan (16,782 kuna), according to the number of inhabitants, was followed by Vir (16,142 kuna) and Baška (15,630 kuna). Medulin Municipality is, with 10,434 kuna per capita income, only at 16th place on the list.
As previously mentioned, in front of Medulin are the fellow Istrian municipalities of Motovun and Funtana, with 14,320 and 12,846 kuna per capita, occupying 4th and 5th place on the list, although their budget revenues are considerably lower and amount to just 14,4 and 11,7 million kuna.
Fazana, also in Istria, comes in at 14th place with a revenue of 10,608 kuna.
