ABSTRACT
Croatia is a small country, with an area of 56,538 square kilometres (about one-tenth of the size of France and one-fifth of the size of former Yugoslavia). It had a population of 4.5 million in 2005. Only 26 per cent of Croatia’s territory was arable land in 2001, but overall the country has been fairly well provided with grape-vines, olive groves, fruit trees and (since the late eighteenth century) maize. Croatia’s capital city is Zagreb (855,568 inhabitants in 1981). Its other major cities include Split, Rijeka, Osijek, Cakovec, Zadar, Slavonski Brod, Varazdin, Sisak, Sibenik, Karlovac, Dubrovnik (formerly known by its Italian name, Ragusa), Vukovar and Pula. Croatia’s economy is quite highly developed. In 2004 64.5 per cent of the workforce was engaged in services (including transport and the large tourism sector), 32.8 per cent was employed in industry (including construction) and only 2.7 per cent was engaged in agriculture. In 1989, with 21 per cent of the Yugoslav Federation’s population, Croatia contributed 26 per cent of Yugoslavia’s GDP. Its per-capita income was about 30 per cent above the Yugoslav average. In 2004 Croatia’s per-capita GDP at purchasing power parity was 11,670 dollars, a little over one-third that of France, Germany and the UK (World Bank 2005: 296).
