Higher growth rates are necessary for generating development and helping solve the problem of the external debt and unemployment, the head of the Croatian Chamber of the Economy's department for macroeconomic analysis, Jasna Belosevic Matic, said at a news conference on Friday.
Over the last five years Croatia's economy grew at an average rate of 4.7 percent, while the international average was 3.7 percent and the European Union average 1.2 percent. At the same time, the Lithuanian, Latvian and Chinese economies grew at a rate of between 7 and 10 percent, and Romania's and Bulgaria's grew at rates of 5.7 and 4.9 percent respectively.
Although these countries can be said to be less developed than Croatia, it is a fact that China will soon become one of the leading world economies if it maintains its annual growth rate of 10 percent.
Croatia needs high growth rates in order to reach the level of development of the EU as soon as possible, considering the fact that even with higher growth rates its GDP per capita still does not make up a half of the EU average.
The recently presented Strategic Framework defines goals in that sense in a very good way, and if it achieves those goals, Croatia may reach 70 percent of the EU average, Belosevic Matic said.
Among the more important achievements of the Croatian economy in the last five years is the elimination of insolvency. Outstanding claims in 2000 amounted to 20 billion kuna and today they amount to around 11 billion, and 90 percent of the cases are long-term debts, Belosevic Matic said.
Commenting on speculation that the government has lately been generating new insolvency and not meeting its financial obligations on time, Belosevic Matic said that state finances were still not sufficiently transparent, so she did not have such information, but that available data did not indicate such a trend.