Trade Deficit Reached 5.2 Billion Euros

According to the latest data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, goods worth 1.3 billion euros were imported into Croatia during September, while at the same time, goods worth 775 million euros were exported to foreign markets.

Compared to September of last year, both commodity imports and exports decreased by 12.7 percent. However, the significantly larger absolute decline in the value of imported goods compared to the decline in the value of exports resulted in a 12.8 percent reduction in the deficit, bringing the foreign trade balance deficit for the observed month to 520 million euros. The coverage of imports by exports slightly decreased to 59.8 percent. Negative trends were also recorded on a monthly basis, write RBA analysts.

Compared to August of this year, exports decreased by 7.1 percent, while monthly imports recorded a decline of 3.5 percent. Cumulatively, since the beginning of the year, commodity exports in the first nine months of this year are 2.2 percent lower compared to the same period last year, while commodity imports recorded a slight annual growth rate of 0.7 percent. The kuna statistics of foreign trade movements are somewhat more favorable, as the slight depreciation of the kuna affected a smaller decline in exports along with a slight increase in imports (-0.8 percent versus +0.4 percent). With exports of 7 billion euros and imports of 12.2 billion euros, the coverage of imports by exports was 57.7 percent.

The foreign trade exchange deficit in the observed period reached 5.16 billion euros, which is 0.9 percent higher than in the same period last year. The growth of exports, along with relatively low competitiveness, is limited by unfavorable trends in the economies of our most important foreign trade partners (EU and CEFTA), as well as restructuring processes in the most important export sectors. For example, if we exclude from the statistics the category of exports of other means of transport (which predominantly includes shipbuilding and accounts for about 10 percent of the total export value and records an annual decline of 45 percent), commodity exports increased by 3.8 percent in the first nine months. On the other hand, weak and exhausted domestic demand and partial substitution with domestic products affect the trends in the import of goods.

Observing by NKD, a significant increase in imports in the first nine months, both in absolute and relative terms, was recorded in electricity supply (+40.1 percent or 117 million euros) and the production of other means of transport (+70.3 percent or 164 million euros). Similar trends, i.e., further declines in both exports and imports, could be recorded by the end of the year.