THE ANALYSIS OF EXPORT COMPETITIVENESS OF CROATIAN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Through analysing the absolute and relative share of the Croatian manufacturing sectors on the global market, this paper identifies which sectors have the largest potential for growth. Namely, export competitiveness of 14 sectors of Croatian manufacturing industry was analysed on the basis of data annually published by the International Trade Centre. Based on the analysis of Trade Performance Index of Croatian manufacturing industry, in the period from 2005 to 2010, we can conclude that the most significant progress was made in the sector of wood products which recorded the largest increase in the world markets share (expressed in the absolute change for the 2007-2010 period) and thus highlighted the characteristics of Croatian manufacturing capacity. Furthermore, the most recent data on Trade Performance Index show that the best ranked Croatian export sector in the year 2010 was the sector of electronic components. On the other hand, the change calculated for the 2006-2010 period, shows that the best result was achieved by the textiles sector. Data on the total share of all 14 sectors in the world market even more highlight the troubling state of Croatian manufacturing industry since this share dropped from 1.67% in 2007 to 1.50% in 2010. According to these data, Croatia is mainly dominated by traditional, labour and raw material-intensive sectors with low technological intensity.