The latest forecast states – recovery in 2016. According to projections by Hrvoje Stojić, director of Economic Research at Hypo Alpe Adria Bank, only then should Croatian GDP finish in a slight positive of 0.8 percent.
In the next two years, Stojić expects a weakening of the recession along with continued deleveraging, and he sees the lag in recovery compared to the region as a result of prolonged fiscal consolidation and structural weaknesses.
The weakening of the recession is good news, although it is primarily due to one-off effects of fiscalization, consumer optimism, and investments around local elections, as well as strong hydrology-driven electricity production, which is why HAAB has improved its GDP forecast for 2013 to -1.25 percent compared to the initial estimate made at this time last year (-1.5 percent). While the first signs of recovery in Europe positively affect foreign demand and our tourism, the second half of the year could underperform compared to the first six months due to: the adverse impact of leaving CEFTA on commodity exports, strengthening competitive import pressures upon entering the EU, uncertain economic policies, low competitiveness, more expensive financing as a result of a more selective approach to individual risks, and generally weaker bank lending and investments. Not only do the highlighted factors indicate a decline in GDP in 2014, but moreover, fiscal ‘scissors’ supported by the Excessive Deficit Procedure, regulations in the banking sector, and uncertain outcomes of pre-bankruptcy settlements impose negative risks.
Positive Risks Meanwhile, they emphasize at HAAB, one should not overlook the ‘positive risks’ that could arise from credible reforms, ‘unfreezing’ larger investments, more decisive restructuring of companies, announced privatizations, reducing uncertainty, and finally, monetary relaxation.
However, the impression is that decision-makers believe the system has enough ‘buffers’, from privatization potential, through discretionary regulation to monetary relaxation, which makes the dynamics of reforms relatively slow. Unfortunately, this only postpones the inevitable and deepens the effect of fiscal multipliers in the coming years. In fact, the greatest danger is that the potential growth rate will be only around 1 percent, leaving the economy sensitive to external and domestic fiscal shocks. According to Stojić’s forecasts, by 2015, unemployment will have a slight increase to 19 percent, inflation to 2.7 percent, external debt to 105.6 percent, etc.
Despite rising indicators of demand recovery in the EU, in the second half of this year, HAAB expects an annual decline in exports caused by the loss of preferential status in CEFTA markets. An additional risk is the fact that Croatia has not managed to diversify from standard export markets (such as Italy and Southeast Europe), thus retaining the problem of uncompetitiveness that prevents a stronger recovery of exports in the medium term. Finally, despite the deleveraging of the private sector and fiscal consolidation, we expect stronger import competition in the EU and stabilization of investments, which will prevent a stronger decline in imports. Consequently, in 2013, a trade balance deficit is expected to be slightly above 15.5 percent of GDP.
Despite the increase in the trade deficit, we expect the current account to remain balanced thanks to a stronger surplus in the services and transfers account, which mitigates the effects of the growing trade balance deficit.
