The foreign trade deficit in agricultural and food products in the first six months of this year exceeded US$381 million and was higher than the deficit in this sector in the entire 2001, Pankretic said at a press conference.
In the first half of 2004 Croatia imported agricultural and food products worth US$700 million or 21 per cent more than in the same period last year. At the same time exports of these products dropped by 11.6 per cent to US$322 million. If such trends continue, this year's import-export difference will exceed two billion kuna, which is the entire budget for agriculture, he added.
Pankretic said that at the next session of Parliament he would request that the government propose measures to improve the foreign trade balance and increase export.
Pankretic believes that this government is responsible for the present situation after it signed Protocol 7 with the European Commission on increasing quotas for the import of agricultural and food products from the European Union.