Croatia: Real GDP Growth Accelerates To Three-Year High 5.2%

The real GDP growth accelerated to 5.2% year-on-year in Q3, the statistical office reported. The results beat the market expectations, which hovered between 3.8% and 5.0%, the average being 4.2%. This has been the fastest rate of economic growth since Q4 of 2002 and reflects growing investments and net exports, mainly due to tourism). Investments increased by 5.8% y/y in Q3, which has been the fastest growth since Q2 last year while exports soared by 4.9% outpacing imports, which rose by 2.3% y/y. The positive contribution of net exports to GDP growth was thus 2pps, reversing the trend from the previous two quarters. The good results came on the back of services where exports surged by 9.6% y/y in Q3 against an 18.4% decline in imports.

The merchandise trade resulted in a higher deficit in Q3 due to the continuing strong import growth. Still, thanks to the somehow slowing domestic consumption, merchandise imports grew at a slightly decelerating rate in Q3 too. In terms of value added, the biggest contribution to overall economic growth had the sectors of financial intermediation (7.8% y/y in almost two years), hotels and restaurants (7.6%, fastest since Q1 of 2004), trade (6.1%) and industry (6.0%). The GDP growth in Jan.-Sept. accelerated to 4.1% y/y against 3.5% in H1, which prompted the finance ministry to revise up its full-year projection to 4.0% y/y from previous 3.9%. The ministry said that industry and retail trade continued growing in the last quarter of the year. Industrial output rose by 7.1% y/y in October and 6.3% in November while retail trade added real 1.7% y/y in October.