External indebtedness of Croatian banks

The paper analyses the main characteristics of the foreign assets and foreign liabilities of the banks that to a great extent include credit and deposit activities with non-residents – foreign physical persons and legal entities, mostly with foreign banks. The author in this paper analyses the size and trends of the Republic of Croatia’s external debt with regard to gross domestic product, import, export, international reserve of the Croatian National Bank (HNB), etc. The author also discusses external debt of the banks that have, during the past few years, contributed substantially to the overall external debt of the Republic of Croatia. The autor points out that the banks have used foreign sources mainly for placing citizens’ loans, and less for financing development projects and economy. Thus, the banks have “spent”, i.e. used up their credit capacity as well as the credit capacity of the Republic of Croatia. Regardless of the fact that the banks have improved the quality of their assets, maintained liquidity/solvency and made extremely good profits, there have not been positive effects of the multiplication of credits/loans and deposits nor have there been the awaited effects on the growth of the gross domestic product and employment that otherwise might have been achieved via different foreign resources investment policy