ZAGREB, 30 May 2022 - Croatia's commodity export in 2021 totalled HRK 144.3 billion, up by HRK 32 billion or 29% on the year, while import was valued at HRK 214 billion, up by 42 billion of 24%, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (DZS) reported on Monday.

The foreign trade deficit was around HRK 70 billion, increasing by about HRK 9 billion (+16%) from 2020.

The export-import ratio was 67.5% in 2021, whereas in 2020 it was 65%.

With a share of 81% in the total export in 2021, the manufacturing industry generated an increase in exports of about 21%, to HRK 116.3 billion thus contributing the most to overall export trends.

The manufacturing industry contributed the most also to import growth in 2021, accounting for 87% of all imports and an increase in imports of 19% from 2020, to HRK 186.4 billion.

Croatia's most important foreign trade partners in 2021 were EU member states, for 70% of the total exports and about 77% of the total imports.

In 2021, commodity exports to the EU totalled HRK 100 billion, up 31.3% on the year, while imports increased by 20.1% to HRK 163.9 billion.

The biggest foreign trade partners from the EU in 2021 were Germany, Italy and Slovenia.

Trade of goods with non-EU member states accounted for about 30% of the total export in 2021, an increase of about 23%, and for about 23% of the total import, which increased by about 39% compared to 2020.

The biggest foreign trade partners outside the EU in 2021 were Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United States and Serbia.

For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, 16 May 2022 - Of 311,698 registered business entities in Croatia, 172,438 or 55.3% were active in March 2022, according to data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (DZS).

Most of the business entities were trading companies. At the end of March 2022, there were 234,561 trading companies registered, and 137,664, or 58.7%, were active.

There were 73,589 institutions, associations, and organizations, of which 33,965 or 46.2% were active, as well as 3,548 cooperatives, of which 809 were active, and 88,184 sole proprietorships and freelancers.

Out of 172,438 legal entities that were active at the end of March 2022, 66,497 or 38.6% had no employees. There were 88,205 legal entities (51.2% of the total number of active entities) with one to nine employees, 13,677 (7.9%) with 10 to 49 employees, 3,468 (2.0%) with 50 to 249 employees, while large business entities with 250 employees and more accounted for only 0.4%.

The structure of business entities by activity shows that more than half of registered and active businesses operated in four sectors – wholesale and retail trade and repairs of motor vehicles and motorcycles (17.7% of registered businesses and 16.0% of active ones), manufacturing (7.8%; 8.9%), professional, scientific and technical activities (10.2%; 12.6%), and other services (16.2%; 13.1%).

Broken down by type of ownership, 79.1% of businesses were privately owned, 0.8% were state-owned, 0.4% were in mixed ownership, 0.5% were cooperatives, while the ownership of 19.2% of businesses was not tracked.

A total of 168,599 business entities were registered as limited liability companies (71.9%) and 100,979 of them were active (73.4%). There were also 63,031 simple limited liability companies (26.9%) and 35,164 of them were active (25.5%).

For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, 29 April (2022) - Retail sales in Croatia continued to rise in March 2022 for the 14th month in a row and at a faster rate than in February, indicating further recovery of the national economy, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (DZS) reported on Friday.

Retail sales increased by 2% from February 2022 and by 3.6% compared with March 2021.

March 2022 was the 14th consecutive month to see a year-on-year increase in spending, and at a faster rate than the month before, when it increased by 0.3%.

"The uncertainty and high inflationary pressure have already impacted individual... indicators such as retail turnover, with its average real growth rate in the first quarter having slowed down to 2%,"  analysts at Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said in their comment on the DZS report.

Consumer confidence has deteriorated due to inflation growth and the war in Ukraine.

On the other hand, employment will continue to grow and unemployment to decrease at moderate rates, the analysts said.

For more, check out our business section

ZAGREB, 20 April 2022 - The average net monthly wage for February 2022 amounted to HRK 7,452, up by 5.9% on the year in nominal terms, but down by 0.4% in real terms, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

Month on month, the average net wage was up by 1% in nominal terms and by 0.1% in real terms.

The median net wage for February was HRK 6,151.

The highest average net wage was paid in the manufacture of basic pharmaceutical products and pharmaceutical preparations, amounting to HRK 16,787, while the lowest was in security and investigation activities at HRK 4,758.

The average gross wage was HRK 10,109, up by 6.8% in nominal terms and by 0.5% in real terms from February 2021 and up by 1.3% in nominal terms and by 0.4% in real terms from January 2022.

(€1 = HRK 7.5)

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 15 April (2022) - Prices of goods and services for personal consumption, measured by the consumer prices index, in March 2022 were on average 7.3% higher than in the same month of last year, the Croatian statistical office (DZS) said on Friday.

That is the highest inflation rate since the summer of 2008.

Compared to February 2022, consumer prices were 2.1% higher on average.

In Q1 2022, consumer prices were on average 6.4% higher than in Q1 2021.

Food prices, which also include prices of non-alcoholic beverages and which account for one quarter of the market basket, have increased by 10.3% year-on-year, contributing the most to the annual index growth rate (+2.8%).

As expected, transport prices grew the most, by 14.4%, primarily due to fuel prices, contributing 2.12 percentage points to the index growth rate, while prices of accommodation, water, electricity, gas and other fuels increased by 3.8%, contributing 0.64 pp.

Compared to February, prices of clothing and footwear grew the most (+12.2%), followed by transport prices (+5.3%), and restaurant and hotel prices (+1.8%).

The inflationary pressure caused by energy and food price growth has grown stronger due to current geopolitical conflicts and the uncertainty regarding their duration and outcome, and even though the government has taken certain steps to alleviate the impact of rising energy prices on consumers, a direct spillover effect of rising energy and food prices on global markets is inevitable, analysts at Raiffeisen Bank said in their comment on the DZS report.

For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, 13 April 2022 - In February this year, 993 building permits were issued in Croatia, which is 21.1% more than in the same month last year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (DZS).

Of those, 882 or 88.8% were issued for buildings and 111 or 11.2% for other structures.

Compared with February 2021, the number of building permits issued for buildings increased by 30.7% and the number of those issued for other structures fell by 23.4%.

The value of works envisaged in the permits was HRK 3 billion, which is 28.3% more than in February 2021, when their value was HRK 2.3 billion.

The permits issued for buildings estimated the value of works at HRK 2.3 billion (+34.6%) and the permits issued for other structures estimated the value of works at HRK 675 million (+10.1%).

Of the total number of building permits, 806 (81.2%) were issued for new-builds and 187 (18.8%) for reconstruction projects.

A total of 1,780 building permits were issued in January and February 2022, an increase of 12.2% compared with the same period in 2021.

For more, check out our lifestyle section.

ZAGREB, 7 April 2022 - Croatia's commercial accommodation facilities saw 398,000 tourist arrivals and 1.1 million overnight stays in the first two months, which is 206,000 more arrivals and 581,000 more overnights compared with the same period of 2021, the national statistical office (DZS) said on Thursday.

In the first two months of 2022, domestic tourists generated 209,000 arrivals, or 54,000 more than in 2021, as well as 481,000 overnight stays, or 141,000 more year-on-year.

Foreign tourists generated 189,000 arrivals and 595,000 overnights stays in the first two months of 2022, which is an increase of 152,000 and 440,000 respectively.

The highest number of overnights was generated by tourists from Slovenia (17.7%), Germany (11.6%), Austria (10.7%), Italy (6.6%), the US (6.4%) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (6.4%).

The number of foreign tourists in commercial accommodation facilities surges by 468% in February

Compared to February 2021, this February alone 116.7% more tourists opted for commercial accommodation facilities or 225,500 of them, and they generated nearly 570,000 overnights or 132.5% more. Compared with February 2019, tourist arrivals dropped by 14.7%, while overnight stays went up by 3.7%.

There were 115,700 foreign tourists, or as many as 468.4% more than in February last year. They also generated 323.7% more overnights stays, or 334,400. Compared with February 2019, there were 32.1% fewer foreign tourist arrivals and 6.1% fewer overnights.

The most numerous were foreign guests from Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Italy, the US and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, 2 April 2022 - The total number of workers in the industrial sector in February 2022 rose 0.3% from the previous month and fell 0.9% compared to February 2021, show data from the national statistical office (DZS).

According to the National Classification of Economic Activities (NKD), month-on-month, the number of employees in mining and quarrying dropped by 0.2%, and it went down 0.3% in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply, while it increased 0.3% in manufacturing.

Year-on-year, the number of workers in mining and quarrying fell 0.5%, and by 1.1% in manufacturing, while it rose 1.8% in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply.

According to the DZS data, Croatia's industrial output rose by 4% in February, thus growing for 15 months in a row on the year.

ZAGREB, 31 March 2022 - Croatia's industrial production continued to rise in February for the 15th month in a row, and faster than the previous month, indicating further recovery of the economy.

In February 2022, industrial production increased by 2.6% compared with the previous month and by 4.0% compared with February 2021, the National Bureau of Statistics (DZS) reported on Thursday.

This was faster growth than in January when production had risen by 3.5% year on year.

The growth was recorded in all five sectors. 

Production of capital goods increased the most, by 11.5%, production of durable consumer goods by 5.4%, production of energy by 3.9%, production of non-durable goods by 2.6% and production of intermediate goods by 1.3%.

In the first two months of 2022, industrial production increased by 3.8% compared with the same period in 2021.

In 2021, industrial production bounced back by 6.7% after shrinking by 3.4% in 2020 on account of the coronavirus crisis.

This year, however, production might slow down due to the economic consequences of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, analysts at Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA) said in their comment on the DZS report.

Business: For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, 30 March 2022 - Croatia's industrial sales in January 2022 increased by 15.7% compared with January 2021 and by 5.5% when compared with December 2021, according to data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (DZS).

Compared with January 2021, industrial sales increased by 11.6% on the domestic market, and 24.5% on the foreign market.

Broken down by main industrial groupings, sales of energy rose by 51.2%, sales of intermediate goods by 21.2%, sales of capital goods by 14.1%, sales of non-durable consumer goods by 11.5%, and sales of durable consumer goods by 7.0%.

Industrial sales had been on the rise throughout 2021, with the exception of February when they declined by 7.7% year on year. The lowest increase of 1.7% was recorded in January, while two-digit increases have been observed since March. The largest increase of 40.6% was reported in April.   

Compared with December 2021, industrial sales rose by 5.5%, going up by 1.7% on the domestic market and 2.2% on the foreign market.

Month on month, sales of energy increased by 67.8%, sales of non-durable consumer goods by 6.6% and sales of capital goods by 1.9%, while sales of durable consumer goods fell by 15.3% and sales of intermediate goods by 9.5%.

For more, make sure to check out our business section.