GDP growth in Q1 2022 of 7 percent is "in line with the government's projections, and some segments of the GDP even surpassed our expectations," Finance Minister, Zdravo Maric, said on Friday.

In Q1 2022, Croatia’s GDP was 7.0% higher in real terms than in the same quarter of 2021, the state statistics bureau reported earlier on Friday.

Maric told a news conference that this growth reflected the continuation of good and positive economic trends, and he highlighted the contribution to the growth by the sectors of transport, hospitality industry and tourism, explaining that this contribution indicated the recovery of this segment of the economy from the corona crisis.

He also pointed out marked growth rates in the exports and imports, however, the net contribution of the exports is mildly negative.

Furthermore, the increase in investments and household consumption made the minister happy.

Maric also expects good news next week when convergence reports for the EU member-states, including Croatia, should be released.

Asked by the press if he was afraid of stagflation in the rest of this year, Maric said that in parallel to the measures taken to counter the rising inflation, one should also take care of maintaining the economic activity, otherwise, an undesirable scenario of the combination the falling GDP and increasing inflation could happen.

“It is very likely to the inflation will continue accelerating in May,” said the minister announcing a set of schemes to help curb the inflation.

He also said that it was important to take heed of what the European Central Bank would do.