ZAGREB, 9 March, 2021 - A total of 36,257 births were registered in Croatia in 2020 as against 36,553 in 2019, the Večernji List daily said on Tuesday, quoting data from the Justice and Public Administration Ministry.

In 2020 there were 15,163 marriages, of which 6,497 took place in a religious ceremony and 8,666 in a civil ceremony. This is as many as 4,779 fewer marriages than in 2019. Last year also saw 66 life partnerships between persons of the same sex, an increase of 47 life partnerships compared to 2019. Most life partnerships were registered in Zagreb and in Primorje-Gorski Kotar and Istria counties.

A total of 59,814 persons died in 2020, an increase from 54,050 deaths in 2019.

On 31 December 2020, there were 4,610,461 voters on the electoral register, of whom 3,709,444 lived in Croatia and 901,017 abroad.

Most out-of-country voters were from Bosnia and Herzegovina (322,298), followed by Germany (118,587) and Serbia (115,492).

The citizenship of 178,867 voters was not known.

 For more news about Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

ZAGREB, 5 March, 2021 - Over the past 12 months interest in buying a house in Zagreb dropped by 10% while at the same time interest in house purchase in Gorski Kotar, Lika and Istria grew significantly, shows an analysis by the Njuškalo online classified site.

Even though there have been no major changes in asking prices for real estate in Zagreb over the past 12 months, trends related to demand point to changes in customers' interest, which is probably due to a series of earthquakes that hit central Croatia in 2020.

Whereas last year clients increasingly searched for houses in Zagreb, rather than flats, over the past 12 months the interest in buying a house in Zagreb dropped by 10%.

In the entire country the interest in house and flat purchases grew less than one percent on the year but some regions have become much more attractive.

In the central mountainous Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, the interest in buying a house rose by 26.75% in the last 12 months, while in Istria it went up by 25%. Ads for properties in Lika-Senj County, too, saw an increase in views of 22.4%.

The average asking price for houses in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County was €1,595 per square metre, in Istria County it was €1,799 and in Lika-Senj County €1,160.

Potential buyers also increasingly searched for houses in Zadar County, as well as in the region of Međimurje, with interest in buying real estate there going up by 11%.

Interest in flats in Zagreb up 5.6%

From February 2020 to February 2021 interest in buying a flat in Zagreb grew by 5.6%, with the average asking price exceeding €2,150 in February 2021.

Among the cities where asking prices have continued growing are Osijek, Zadar and Pula, with Rijeka seeing the highest increase, of 6.4%, for the second consecutive month. Even though Split was previously in this group, it has been stagnating now in terms of the average asking price, Njuškalo says.

Rent in Zagreb down 9%, demand down 6%

Over the past 12 months, the rent on flats in Zagreb dropped by 9% and demand in the first two months of this year dropped 6% compared to the same period of 2020.

The average rent in Zagreb was €539, with most flats for rent having an area of 40-70 square metres, and the only flats to see an increase in the cost of rent on the year were those with an area of 20 square metres. The cost of rent for such flats went up by 3.2% to an average €231 per month.

The cost of rent dropped the most in the downtown area of Zagreb, by 11%, however, the average cost of rent still exceeds €700 a month, the online site says.

According to the Croatian tourist registration platform eVisitor, which is used by hotels and private accommodation renters, the millionth overnight stay in Dubrovnik was registered on June the 1st this year.

Dubrovački vjesnik reports that it's five days earlier than that benchmark number was achieved last year (or, of course, any previous year, as Dubrovnik as well as Croatia have been on an upward trend for a long time now). The system does not include nautical tourists who spend their nights on the boats.

Almost 400,000 tourists stayed in Dubrovnik in the first five months of 2019, which is over 30% more than during the same period last year. The largest number of registered guests arrived to Dubrovnik from the United Kingdom, the US, Germany, France, Croatia (!), Finland, Spain, Bosnia, Korea and Canada. Just a bit more than half of all tourists arriving in Dubrovnik in that period stayed in hotels, which also marks significant growth for them.

Even May has seen major growth when compared to last year: 10% more people came to Dubrovnik in May, and there were more than 2% more overnight stays spent in the town.

And with the certain reported negative tendencies that are often mentioned when discussing tourism in Croatia in 2019, and keeping in mind that the weather this spring has been extremely tourist-unfriendly (to say the least), such growth (both in terms of arrivals and overnight stay in Dubrovnik) can be seen as a very positive sign. It is also important to keep in mind that these statistics are imperfect (as statistics almost always are), as we've previously described on TCN.

According to food expenditure statistics, Croatia is still spending significantly more than the European average, with the British paying the least towards food and drink in all of Europe.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 30th of March, 2019, expenditures for transport of the average Croatian family were equal to the cost of housing and for the first time, they reached fifteen percent of the average household budget. Based on the Household consumption survey, which is otherwise conducted every three years, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the average Croatian family spent 82,530 kuna per household in 2017, which is a monthly cost of about 6,800 kuna.

Croatia takes first place when it comes to the amount allocated to food in the household budget, but it is about five percentage points less than ten years ago when every third kuna was spent on food, Večernji list writes. The other countries which follow Croatis are Romania, where 26 percent of the typical household budget goes to food, while in Serbia, which is considered a third country, yet remains an EU candidate, that stands at 22 percent.

According to data on food expenditures, Croatia is still significantly above the European average, where 12 percent of household budgets typically go on food and drink, and in developed western economies, that figure is usually between 7 and 10 percent. The dominance of food expenditures is a feature of poorer countries with lower wages. Food prices in Croatia are similar, if not more expensive than in Western Europe, while salaried employees receive three to four times lower salaries, which ensure a much higher quality of life and go on including things such as outings, recreation, travel, and further education.

In Croatia, there is still one item where the standard of living has remained the same to a certain extent, and that is the typical cost of housing and the consumption of energy, to which 15.7 percent of the household budget goes, while at the EU level, the energy bills and rent account for a much higher 24 percent of the typical household budget. The British pay the leasr for food, and it typically accounts for a mere 7.2 percent of the British household budget, yet on the other hand, 27 percent of a typical British household budget is spent on various housing costs. Only Cyprus, Lithuania and Malta have lower housing costs than Croatia.

When looking at nominal amounts, just a couple of years ago, the average Croatian household spent 21,353 kuna per year on food and drink, of which the highest costs are for meat, costing about 6,700 kuna, and non-alcoholic beverages, costing 1,900 kuna, these beverages were mostly coffee, mineral water and various types of juices. In Croatia, at least according to the latest statistics, there is actually less smoking and drinking going on, and alcohol and cigarettes have fallen below three percent of the typical household budget to 2.9 percent (2,421 kuna per year), for the first time ever.

In Croatia, communication costs continue to above the EU average, on which 2.5 percent of the household budget is spent. Bulgaria and Serbia are the most similar to Croatia in terms of spending, while communication costs in other post-socialist countries is significantly cheaper and accounts for about three percent of the typical household budget. The average Croatian family pays 4,113 kuna annually for telephone services, which is almost twice as much as it allocates for health care services. For transport, about 13,000 kuna is spent annually, while clothing and footwear have about 6,000 kuna spent on them.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more.

As Novac/Sanja Stapic/Slobodna Dalmacija writes on the 27th of March, 2019, why exactly are the powers that be in Croatia constantly talking about importing workers from around the world if they can be found among students and retired people already here? This is a valid question that is increasingly being put forward by Croatian employers, and it could bring results. A new law has put the spring back in the step of many, and riled others, as it allows retirees to be employed for four hours a day, and still retain all of their rights to their retirement and pensions.

It was in this exact manner that Spar Croatia launched an employment program for retired individuals which lasts for four hours, allowing them continued full access to their retirement benefits and offer a flexible employment schedule. Konzum followed the same path not long after, and this giant company is announcing in the media that they're on the lookout for new people, turning to students and also to retired people to whom they're offering part-time jobs, with pleasant and flexible working hours as extra bait.

With regard to the typical pension payout per month, and also given the fact that there are a great many people among the population who haven't yet ''served'' their full working lives and are perfectly healthy and capable of doing so, the average pension stands at 3,665 kuna, so it comes as no real surprise that more than 5,200 retirees are currently working part-time jobs. There will likely be even more joining them as time goes on.

Croatia boasts (alright, maybe that isn't the right word here) a large portion of the populace who don't work, haven't actually registered themselves as unemployed, aren't actually looking for work, and are between the ages of 16 to 64. At the end of September last year, according to a survey taken by the State Bureau of Statistics, an extremely concerning figure of 48.4 percent of Croatia's working-age population was economically inactive. This means that there are more economically inactive people in a normal state of health and who are perfectly capable of working than there are employed persons in Croatia. Of course, those working ''on the black'' or accepting cash in hand jobs, of which there are a great many, are more difficult to account for in this instance.

The survey carried out by the State Bureau of Statistics showed that out of all of the economically inactive persons in the country, 121,000 of those inactive people do want to work, but they aren't actively seeking employment, while 1.57 million don't want to work because of school, their age, illness and various other similar reasons. These other reasons may also include the desire to stay home to bring up their kids, but a large number do earn a living of some sort owing to the so-called grey economy.

For a country like the Republic of Croatia, in which 4.1 million people were registered as living according to the estimates of domestic statistics, 1.7 million inactive people is a very large number of people living their lives almost entirely outside the world of work, at least officially.

Economist Dr. Damir Novotny points out that Croatia currently doesn't have enough of a workforce in any given sector, which in one part is the result of the entirely wrong direction of the country's social policy and in another part, owing to the opening up of the European labour market for Croatian citizens.

''There is clear research on the fact that those who are able to work are excluded from labour market. It's one of the major problems and mistakes of [Croatian] governments over the past 10 to 15 years. We have a problem with the grey economy, we know it's big and many who are formally [registered as] unemployed aren't actually unemployed in reality. Thirdly, but no less significant, is the opening up of the labour market to the part of the working-active population who have a middle to high level of education, who are extremely easily integrated into the European labour market. We have these complex variables in the function of reducing working-active citizens, and on the other hand we don't have enough immigration policies,'' explained Dr. Novotny for Slobodna Dalmacija.

Employers, encouraged by the fact that today retirees can be hired as part-time workers, have decided to try to solve their problems in such a manner. Workers need them, and last year's quota for the import of foreign workers amounted to over 30,000 work permits, and this year that number could be considerably higher, and we already know that the tourism sector, otherwise Croatia's strongest sector, will be missing about 15,000 skilled workers.

The statistics show that the problem will become even worse as time goes on.

Because of the decline in Croatia's overall population and extremely adverse demographic trends, the number of working-age population is continuing to decrease, and back in September last year, there were just 3.5 million working people in the country, which is 110,000 less people than there were back at the beginning of 2010. During that period, the number of economically active people fell by 102,000 people to 1.82 million, the number of those registered as unemployed was reduced by 19,000 to 1.69 million, and so the negative trend continued.

Economists warn that Croatia will need a workforce, it also needs to work hard to activate the inactive population, the long-term unemployed, younger retirees and even people with certain disabilities. Some experts, such as Dr. Danijela Nestić and Ivo Tomić from the Zagreb Institute of Economics, have calculated that Croatia can increase its overall employment levels in only a relatively small manner, even it it managed to employ all the unemployed people and part of the economically inactive people who don't work for family reasons or because they're discouraged in their job searches.

Discouragingly, Croatia is the European ''champion'' with the most retired people who are still of working age, with the most people saying that they're somehow incapable, or too sick to work.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle and business pages for much more.

Click here for the original article by Sanja Stapic for Slobodna Dalmacija

June 4, 2018 — It's actually much worse. Few Croats bother announcing their departure.

According to Ferata.hr, Trilj is another city of the Inland Dalmatia with great results for the first 8 months of this year.

In the period from January to August, Trilj increased the number of tourist arrivals by 39% and overnight stays by 20% compared to the same period of last year.

 

According to the data from the Trilj tourist board, there have been 2.561 arrivals and 11.183 overnight stays in the period of the first 8 months of this year. In the same period last year, it was 1.543 arrivals and 8.606 overnight stays.

And so, in just two months (July and August), Trilj achieved slightly more than 50% of the total number of overnight stays and just over 40% of the total tourist arrivals for the period. It is also interesting, that only in July this year, compared to the same month last year, the number of arrivals jumped from 261 to 542 (50%).

The effects of a successful tourist season throughout Croatia have had an impact on Trilj too, where an increase of arrivals and overnights in the period from the beginning of the year until the end of August have been recorded.

There has been an upward trend in overnight stays in Sinj in the past three years, as Sinj has doubled the number of overnights in this year compared to 2012. The current average length of stay is 2,4 nights, which compared to 1,9 nights in 2014 (1,6 in 2012) is a positive sign of tourist staying longer in the region rather than stopping in Sinj just for one night on their way to their final destination.

Well done, Sinj, keep up the good work!!

Great news from the Imotski tourist board!! After an amazing July, new records were made for August as well.

According to the Imotski tourist board FB page, there were 1.164 tourist with 7.117 overnights in August in the Imotski area. That is 137% more than last year (2.998 overnights). Most guests were from Germany, then Poland, Croatia, France and Great Britain.

With the total number of 15.065 overnights from the beginning of the year (comparing to 7.416 overnights last year), it is clear, that Imotski sets new trends in terms of overnights achievements.

Wow, 137%!! Great, we are very curious to get the numbers for September and the whole year. Keep going, Imotski!!

(photo: Imotski tourist board FB page)

The numbers for July are out and Imotski has set new records as it has more then doubled the number of overnights in July (from 2258 in 2014 to 4852 in 2015). Most overnights were from guests from Germany (1104), then followed by guests from Croatia (747), Great Britain (443), Netherlands (424), Belgium (352) and Norway (252). The total number for the first 7 months in Imotski is at 7948 overnights, which is 80% more than in the same period last year.

According to the director of the Imotski tourist board Luka Kolovrat there are almost no available beds currently in Imotski as everything is full and the expectations for August are even higher than for July in terms of setting new records for overnights. Congratulations to Imotski and Luka! May you continue this very positive trend.