Friday Column - Croatia, The Week In Review 8

Apologies for a fairly minimalistic week of news and views on Croatia Online this week. The Easter break has taken its toll! Next week we should be back to full strength.

Tourism

There’s been no sign of an influx of Easter tourists down here in Split though I suppose that’s because the new low cost flights don’t start until early May. It will be interesting to see if the infrastructure can cope with a large number of early independent travellers, rather than the more normal huge influx of peak season package holiday makers.

External Debt

In the first two months of 2006, Croatia's external debt has increased by 700 million euros to reach a total of just over 26 billion. The central bank maintains that the situation is still under control but if the trend was to continue, there could be a debt crisis as debt would reach 86% of GDP against a tolerance figure of 80%. The Finance Minister, Ivan Suker suggested that the rise was only of concern if it was not a result of the introduction of new technologies. It was reported that the latest measure of a 55 percent tax on new foreign loans seems to have slowed down the trend!

Next week we will be in the UK, looking at the Croatian perspective from that angle, and trying to catch up with the aftermath of the Croatia Exclusive Exhibition.