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The domestic capital markets are experiencing growth for the seventh straight day. On Monday the CROBEX index came close to 2,300 points and closed at 2,272.94 points, an increase of 6.01%. Damir Čukman, the Erste securities portfolio manager, commented that the “capital market participants are presently awaiting for the recovery of the market, but since it did not happen, the speculations that these may be the last days of negative trends and that the recovery is on its the way are a bit premature.”

On Monday, the Zagreb Stock Exchange trading reached 90.8 million kunas, once again continuing the growth trend, as opposed to the trend at the beginning of the year. The most traded share was that of HT with 16.6 million kunas in trade, while its value grew to 222.86 kunas, an increase of 0.4 %. The next best trading stock was Atlantska Plovidba, with 13.9 million kunas in trade and ended the day’s trading at 1,320 kunas; due to significant over-trading, trading of this stock was temporarily blocked. The analyst of Fima Securities, Mr. Željko Bunjevac, commented to Poslovni Dnevnik, “these positive trends on the ZSE are in correlation to the leading US and European capital markets. Since the leading US exchanges positively closed trading on Friday and the European markets opened positively on Monday, this was an encouragement for the domestic market to continue with the growth trend.” He also pointed out that the positive trends on the leading world markets were a result of the positive macroeconomic data and reduced fear of investors. This was also reflected on the ZSE. “Encouraged by statistics that the fall in the real sector is slowing down, investors on the Croatian market, like the investors on the foreign market ones, are more willing to take risk in their investment decisions, as opposed to the situation a couple of months ago, resulting in an increase of stock purchases, raising stock values,” explains Čukman. He points out that the pricing fluctuations we see happening in 2009 on the Croatian and the foreign markets are common in this phase of the economic cycle, when it is still uncertain when and how quickly the real sector will recover. After month of resistance, the domestic banks are experiencing the negative effects of the crisis as well; in the first four months, the banks profited by 1.64 billion kunas or 56.5 million less than in the same period last year. The total assets surpassed 371 billion kunas or 108 % of BDP value. Besides these profit statistics, the Central Bank statistics also show that the loan giving structure has changed in only one year. The state took quite a large chunk out of the money markets. According to statistics, 23.7 billion kunas of loans were given to the state, which is 109% more than a year ago. The state funds received (8.6 billion kunas) 50 % more than last year. These figures are in line with the statement given by Mr. Željko Rohatinski, Governor of the Croatian National Bank, that the Central bank gave its blessing (by relaxing its restrictive monetary policy) to the banking sector to finance the state, thereby relieving the state’s danger of insolvency, allowing it to service their external debts.