Direct Foreign Investment Down Nearly 60%

Direct foreign investment in Croatia last year totalled 436.9 million euros, a drop of almost 60% from the year previous, according to preliminary data released today by the Croatian National Bank (HNB)…

Croatia continues to struggle to attract any serious overseas investment, with Direct foreign investment in 2013 618.1 million euros less than in it was 2012, or a decline of a massive 58.58%, when direct foreign investment totalled 1.05 billion euros.

“New investments were generally in the areas of financial intermediation (leasing), real estate and telecommunications. Besides that, in the last quarter of 2013 negative retained earnings were recorded, primarily in financial intermediation and production of petroleum products, as a result of the negative results of local enterprises owned by non-residents,” said HNB analysts.

In the last 21 years, from 1993 to 2013, foreigners had invested a total of 26.8 billion euros, with the peak being 2008 when over 4 billion euros were invested. Austrians, followed by the Dutch, Germans and Hungarians, were the biggest foreign investors, the data released today revealed.