In December 2018, the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) increased markedly in Croatia, reflecting the optimism wave in both the services and retail sectors, showed the European Commission's (EC) monthly survey released on Tuesday.

ESI, published monthly by the EC, is made up of five confidence indicators according to sector, with different weights: industrial (40 percent), construction (5 percent), services (30 percent), consumer (20 percent), and retail trade (5 percent).

The ESI for Croatia in December 2018 was up two points from November, reaching 117.4 points, its highest level since May 2018.

The biggest increase in December was recorded in services confidence (+5.6 points, reaching 21.9 points), followed by retail trade confidence (+5.2 points, increasing to 7.8 points).

A marked decrease was recorded in construction confidence which was up 1.7 points, reaching 14.9 points. also up was consumer confidence (+1.1 points, closing at -8.6 points).

A decrease was marked only in industry confidence, which was down 0.4 points, closing at 1.6 points.

Economic sentiment down markedly in both the euro zone and the EU

In December 2018, the ESI decreased markedly in both the euro zone (by 2.2 points to 107.3) and the EU (by 2.0 points to 107.6).

The marginally smaller decline of the headline indicator for the EU (−2.0) can be attributed to virtually unchanged sentiment in the largest non-euro zone EU economy, the UK (+0.1), while the ESI dropped in Poland (−1.2).

EU confidence deteriorated markedly in line with the euro zone in industry, services, construction and among consumers, and also weakened in retail trade.

The deterioration of euro zone sentiment resulted from lower confidence in industry, services, construction and among consumers, while confidence improved slightly in retail trade.

The ESI weakened in all the five largest euro zone economies; significantly so in Spain (−3.0), France (−2.0), Germany (−1.9) and Italy (−1.4) and, marginally so, in the Netherlands (−0.3).

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