ZAGREB, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- Croatia's public debt at the end of December stood at 43.3 billion U.S. dollars, which is 1.1 percent less than in December 2017, Raiffeisen Bank Austria (RBA) announced on Monday based on the data of the Croatian National Bank.
The Austrian bank analysts claim that last year's debt dropped 480 million U.S. dollars due to the fall of external and internal components. They estimate that the share of debt in Croatian GDP is likely to remain below 75 percent at the end of 2018, once the central bank release data for November and December.
A decrease in public debt has been registered despite the crisis in the biggest Croatian shipbuilding group Uljanik. On the last day of 2018, around 390 million U.S. dollars had been paid to shipbuilding group from the state budget as part of the state issued guarantees. Although further payments to Uljanik should have an effect on the state budget balance and the public debt, the RBA analysts believe that a trend in fiscal statistics is likely to remain relatively good.
According to Economic and Fiscal Policy Guidelines for the period 2019-2021, the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2019 should fall to 71.5 percent, 68.5 percent in 2020, and 65.4 percent in 2021.
The Croatian government has a strategy to join the eurozone in the next four to six years but to do that it has to meet the main economic convergence criteria. The public debt, among other things, shouldn't be higher than 60 percent of GDP.
