Croatia's credit rating trend has been slashed from ascending to declining by Dun and Bradstreet (D&B), the international agency for business and risk management information. The country's poor economic status, which means it is considered a slight investment risk, is the latest event in over a month of bad news for Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor's government.
Croatia's falling credit rating is bad news for Jadranka Kosor's government. In early October, the World Bank published a report on eastern Europe and central Asia concluding that countries in the region are recovering at very different speeds: "negative four percent for Kyrgyzstan and negative two percent for Croatia and Romania."
Indermit Gill, the World Bank's chief economist for the region, said the poor results were due to high social spending related to GDP and high external debts. Croatian minister of finance Ivan Suker rejected any comparison with Kyrgyzstan, but admitted that Croatia will also have negative growth this year (in 2009 growth was down by 5.8 percent and this year down around two percent). But he claimed the country is coming out from recession, which he corroborated with positive trends in the last quarter of 2010.
Almost all independent Croatian economic analysts agree that the country is moving away from recession but that progress will be long and painful. They also point out that Croatian economic recovery is largely a result of the recovery of the country's main economic partner, the eurozone, particularly Germany, Austria and Italy. Entrepreneurs and employers agree but argue that current government measures are too slow and not radical enough. Mr Suker rejected their claims.
News source: waz.euobserver.com link: article
No comments:
Post a Comment