In the period between 1993 and the end of the third quarter of last year, ownership investments accounted for the largest part of overall foreign direct investments - around 6.6 billion dollars. Most ownership investments referred to investments in the telecommunications sector (20.32 percent), the banking sector (19.86 percent), the pharmaceutical industry (10.89 percent), and the oil industry (7.65 percent). More than one-quarter (25.64 percent) of all foreign investments in the period between 1993 and the end of last September were made by companies from Austria, and more than one-fifth (20.42 percent) by those from Germany. Austrian and German investments accounted for almost one half of overall foreign investments in the first three quarters of 2004, which totalled 877.1 million dollars.
Most foreign investments made in Croatia between January and September last year, totalling 386 million dollars, were ownership investments. Retained profit accounted for 359.8 million of overall investments, while other investments accounted for 145.5 million dollars. More than 40 percent of ownership investments in the January-September 2004 period referred to the commercial sector, while investments in the sector of financial mediation accounted for 20 percent of all investments. Investments in the commercial sector referred mostly to leading chains of stores, while investments in the financial sector referred mainly to the acquisition of shares in existing banks or their recapitalisation.
In the July-September 2004 period foreign investments totalled 300 million dollars, 162 million dollars more than in the same period of 2003. This increase is the result of the fact that the number of companies whose retained profit was covered by the report for the third quarter of last year was higher than in the same period of 2003. Foreign investments in last year's third quarter were mostly ownership investments, i.e. investments into stocks and shares (154 million dollars), which are followed by retained profit (81 million dollars) and other investments (65 million dollars). In the first three quarters of 2004, Croatian companies invested 102.4 million dollars abroad, and in the period between 1993 and the end of September 2004, investments in foreign countries amounted to around 1.3 billion dollars.