Road freight transport is booming in Croatia, albeit not quite at the same level as the record year of 2017. If you want to find out more about the industry and the country’s economy, just read on.

Road freight transport in Croatia has seen steady growth in recent years. In 2017, the volume of goods transported by road reached 17.3 billion tonne-kilometres, the highest figure since records began in 2006. Industry turnover rose from 1.16 billion euros in 2012 to a forecast 2.12 billion euros in 2025. Forecasts also predict that the volume of goods transported by road in Croatia will reach around 14.64 billion tonne-kilometres by 2024.

Major employer

No wonder more and more companies want a slice of the cake. While there were just 6,784 transport companies in 2017 (5,310 of them in road freight transport), this figure rose to 13,228 in 2021 and 13,447 in 2022. Road freight transport employed around 26,500 people in 2020.

The Croatian highway network is one of the youngest in Europe. Many kilometers of freeway have only recently been completed – and there is no end in sight to the brisk construction activity. The main project was the A1 Zagreb-Split highway, which was completed in spring 2005 and provides a continuous link between the two largest Croatian cities.

Room for improvement

The south-eastern European country with a population of around 4 million generated a gross domestic product (GDP) of an estimated 70.55 billion US dollars in 2022. In the same year, GDP growth was 6.22% and 2.7% in 2023. And there is still room for improvement: GDP is forecast to rise to 105.61 billion US dollars by 2028.

In 2022, the inflation rate reached around 10.67 percent. The unemployment rate fell from a high of 17.3% in 2014 to around 7% in 2022 and is expected to be 5.77% in 2024.

The service sector contributed the largest share of GDP in 2022 at 61.3 percent, followed by industry at 19.5 percent and agriculture at 2.5 percent. Around 65.7 percent of the workforce worked in this sector in 2022.

 Over 5,000 transport companies are active on Croatia’s roads. Photo: iStock

The trade balance showed a deficit of around 19 billion US dollars in 2022. Croatia’s most important exports in 2022 included crude oil, petroleum products and related goods with an 8.3 percent share, followed by electrical machinery and apparatus (7.4 %) and electricity (6.2 %). The main export markets were Italy (12.2%), Slovenia (11.5%) and Hungary (11.3%).

Imports were also dominated by crude oil and petroleum products (10.9%), gas (9.8%) and road vehicles (5.8%). The most important import countries were Italy (13.8%), Germany (12.4%) and Slovenia (10.8%).

Imports in the agricultural sector are expected to reach USD 1.80 billion in 2024, with an average annual growth rate of 6.25%. Agricultural exports are expected to reach 2.60 billion US dollars and grow by 14.78% annually.

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