As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 29th of May, 2020, in April this year, retail consumption in Croatia sank by a record 25.5 percent when compared to the same month last year, and industrial production also recorded a large decline, which heralds a sharp decline for the Croatian economy in the second quarter.
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) released a report on retail trade turnover on Friday, and according to calendar-adjusted data, consumption fell 19.8 percent in April compared to the previous month, while, as stated, it sank 25.5 percent compared to April last year.
This is the second month in a row in which consumption has fallen under the influence of the ongoing coronavirus crisis, as it was 7 percent lower in March than in the same month last year. The CBS also announced on Friday that industrial production fell by 11 percent in April compared to the same month last year, its biggest drop since June 2009, when it sank 13.3 percent.
This is the sixth month in a row that production has been falling, and it doesn’t bode well for the Croatian economy.
This sharp drop in consumption and production across Croatia is the result of measures aimed at preventing the spread of the new coronavirus, which came into force in the second half of March.
This slowed down growth for the Croatian economy in the first quarter, meaning that gross domestic product (GDP) grew by a mere 0.4 percent on an annual basis, the slowest since the end of 2014, CBS data released recently showed.
In the second quarter, a sharp decline in the Croatian economy is expected, followed by a recession, ie, a decline in the Croatian economy for two consecutive quarters.
In a recent survey conducted by Hina, analysts expect Croatia’s GDP to fall by 20.5 percent in the second quarter when compared to the same period last year, and their estimates of the fall range from 15 to 25 percent.
This is significantly more than 8.8 percent, the largest drop in GDP so far, recorded in the first quarter of 2009 at the beginning of the financial crisis.
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