A study with findings about economic efficiency of Croatian towns and cities from 2004 to 2007 was presented this past week by Mato Crkvenac of the "Razvojni Institut Zagreb" company specialised in research and development analyses.
Crkvenac explained that the study was not about the level of the development but about the efficiency of urban centres' economies.
Those indicators are grouped in five categories: the comparable efficiency of business means, export orientation, profitability, work productivity and investments into long-term assets.
The study covered 127 towns and cities and five regions named as eastern, central, northern , western and southern Croatia.
According to the study, the eastern and the southern region conspicuously lag behind in terms of economic development.
The value of production in the eastern part of Croatia in 2005 was 20 percent below what it created 15 years before. In the southern part of the country, Gross Domestic Product in 2005 was by 4.7 percent lower than in 1990, Crkvenac said.
The most successful regions were Istria with Primorje (western Croatia) and then central and northern Croatia.
"Not before mid-2004 Croatia reached the same GDP as it was in 1990. This is a serious problem and shows that after the war Croatia lacked post-war boom and zeal to accelerate the economy," he said.