Although the European Commission (EC) has said in this week's economic forecast that Croatia's GDP would grow by 2.8 percent in 2018, inching down to 2.7 percent in 2019, a panel of economic analysts invited to analyse the forecast were less optimistic about the country's long-term outlook.

A panel of analysts were invited to discuss EC’s forecast and the slowing down of Croatia’s GDP growth and industrial production on state radio’s programme U Mrezi Prvog on Friday.

“The key problem of Croatia’s economy is that the government’s share in the national GDP is exceptionally high, making the state itself the largest generator of poverty in Croatia. We also have this acute problem of having only 52 percent of the labour force economically active, which puts Croatia at the bottom of the EU,” said economic analyst Andrej Grubisic.

Economic analyst Damir Novotny said that any GDP growth rate under 3 percent should be considered a stagnation, and compared Croatia’s economy with Slovenia, saying Slovenia was experiencing a much better upswing, due to investments.