The surplus of Croatia’s current account balance in the third quarter of 2008 amounted to 1.85 billion euros, which is a 10.7 percent decrease compared to the same period last year, while the current account deficit for the first nine months of last year nearly reached 2.5 billion euros, according to the latest preliminary data from the Croatian National Bank (HNB).
In the third quarter of last year, the positive balance on the services account amounted to 4.58 billion euros, which is a 6.4 percent increase compared to the same period the year before. Of this, a surplus from travel or tourism was achieved in the amount of 4.39 billion euros, which is an improvement of 263 million euros or 6.3 percent compared to the third quarter of 2007. However, at the same time, the deficit on the goods account increased by 18.2 percent or 422 million euros, to 2.7 billion euros. Such developments have influenced the further deepening of the current transactions deficit of Croatia’s balance of payments in the first nine months of 2008.
Thus, the current account deficit of the balance of payments for the first three quarters of 2008 exceeded 2.48 billion euros, while in the same period of the previous year it amounted to 1.32 billion euros. The HNB estimated at the end of December that the current account deficit of the balance of payments in 2008 would rise to 11 percent of GDP compared to 9 percent of GDP in 2007. The significant increase in the current account deficit is primarily due to the high growth of the deficit in trade with foreign countries, which could not be mitigated by somewhat favorable developments in the services account. Thus, the deficit on the goods account for the first three quarters of 2008 amounted to 8.4 billion euros, which is 1.4 billion euros or 20.1 percent higher than in the same period of 2007. At the same time, the relations in the exchange of services with foreign countries were somewhat more favorable than in the previous year.
