While the rest of Croatia continues to suffer with a poor demographic outlook, the Pearl of the Adriatic has some promise.
As Dubrovacki Dnevnik writes on the 24th of February, 2018, the unfavourable statistics and alarming data suggesting that more than 17,000 people died than were born in the Republic of Croatia last year continues to be the main news of the national media. Despite this, down south in Dubrovnik, a positive story and a completely different trend can be found.
The local portal Dubrovacki Dnevnik sent a request to the Dubrovnik-Neretva County State Administration Office enquiring about the number of births and deaths last year in both Dubrovnik and the wider Dubrovnik-Neretva County, and the results showed that there is no cause for concern in the extreme south of Croatia.
According to the data obtained, 1,144 babies were born in the city of Dubrovnik in 2017, while jusr 731 people died. Thus, in contrast to the depressing demographic data on a national level, a considerable ”number 413” in Dubrovnik leans in favour of birth. A slightly worse but still positive situation was recorded in the wider area of Dubrovnik-Neretva County, where 1588 babies were born last year, and 1,483 people died.
Positive trends were also recorded back in 2016, when from January to October the number of births in relation to the number of deaths was in a heavy plus.
The reason, roughly speaking, is likely to lie in the overall better standard of living than is the case with most of the rest of Croatia. While unemployment continues to be the main and seemingly eternal problem of the Croatian population, which is why a large number of people take advantage of European Union membership and migrate to other nations such as the UK, Germany and Ireland where they can find better paid work, there are about 2,000 seasonal workers missing in Croatia’s popular southernmost city. In addition, as far as employment is concerned, Dubrovnik is at the top of the list of Croatian cities where unemployment is at its lowest.
It is true that many families in Dubrovnik struggle due to the high property prices, however, the City of Dubrovnik is attempting to successfully address this problem, and Mayor Mato Franković has announced the construction of 130 new POS apartments for local Dubrovnik families in the Solitudo area of the city.
“The apartments will be available for rent for 1,500 kuna per month, and after the 10 year expiration period has passed, all those who live there will be able to buy them at a pre-announced, fixed amount where each ”square” of the apartment will amount to 1,300 euro. The specificity of the exposed model is as such so that the future owners of apartments will deduct the amounts they’ve paid on behalf of the lease for 10 years from the price of the apartment. This is a very good model because some 120 families can then get permanent housing,” Franković stated.
As far as the project itself is concerned, all necessary property-related affairs are currently underway so that the land in Solitudo, owned by Vrtlara Dubrovnik, will be transferred into the hands of the City of Dubrovnik, which is a basic precondition for the realisation of the aforementioned project.
Documentation will follow, for which 2 million kuna is reserved in the city’s 2018 budget, as well as the process of obtaining documents for physical planning and construction. These moves are planned to be implemented by the end of 2018, while the construction of the 120 apartments in question will begin in 2019.
In addition to the positive measures being taken by Croatia’s tourist Mecca, Dubrovnik enjoys relatively low unemployment and the future of the City of Dubrovnik appears to bring very few concerns, and the positive birth to death rate in the extreme south of Croatia will surely continue.
