Slovenia and Croatia are the leaders among six Western Balkan countries in terms of digitisation, but unlike Slovenia, which is drawing closer to advanced countries in that regard, Croatia is still far behind, it was said at a conference on the digital economy in Zagreb last Tuesday.

The conference, organised by the Faculty of Economics in cooperation with the Rijeka Faculty of Economics, the Zagreb Institute of Economics (EIZ) and the IT and Organisation Faculty, presented the results of a study on digital transformation in the Western Balkans.

The study results were presented by EIZ director Maruska Vizek and Florian Bieber of the Centre for Southeast European Studies in Graz, Austria.

This is the first study that has calculated digitisation indices for six Western Balkan countries and compared them, as Croatia and Slovenia are the only two countries in the region that are members of the EU and to which the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) applies, as a composite index that summarises relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance and tracks the evolution of EU member states in digital competitiveness.

According to that index, Croatia has jumped up one place in 2018 and is now 22nd of the 28 EU member states in terms of digital competitiveness.

Speaking of Croatia’s position according to DESI and the study on the degree of digitisation in the Western Balkans, Vizek said, “Croatia is definitely not like African countries because they are below the EU and global digitisation levels, but it is still far from advanced countries since it lags behind in terms of several digitisation parameters.”

The regional index indicates that Slovenia has the most digitally advanced economy, followed by Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo.

The digitisation index consists of 16 indicators divided into several categories, such as accessibility and reliability of infrastructure, access to networks, network capacity and human capital.

This and other studies indicate that stepping up digitisation by 10 percent could result in a GDP growth of 0.6 percent.

If Croatia were to continue its digitisation at the current pace, it would take another 30 years to double GDP, but if digitisation is stepped up, the effects will certainly be significantly better, Vizek said.

The study, covering 180,000 companies in the region, shows that increasing digitisation by just one percent in the production sector results in a 2.1 percent growth in productivity and an increase in employment of 1.2 percent, the conference heard.