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Southeastern Europe, at the northeast of the Adriatic Sea, north of Bosnia-Herzegovina, south of Slovenia. Capital: Zagreb.
A presidential/parliamentary democracy.
The Factbook of 2004 writes: "Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision, the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was returned to Croatia in 1998."
Figures unless otherwise stated are from the CIA Factbook.
2009: $17,600
2008: $18,600 )
2007: $18,200
2009: -5.2%
2008: 2.4%
2007: 5.5%
2009: 16.1%
2008: 13.7%
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
2005: Top ten percent of the population, 23.1%; bottom ten percent, 3.6%.
2009: 61% of GDP
Factbook of 2005: "Growth, while impressively about 4 percent for the last several years, has been achieved through high fiscal and current account deficits".
2005: 2.39%
Living in an urban area: 57% (2008)
July 2009: 4.489 million. Growth rate: -0.052%
July 2008: 4.491 million
2009: More people arriving than leaving, for a net gain of 1.59 persons per 1,000 population.
2009: 6.37
2008: 6.49
2005: 6.84
2009: 75.35 years
2008: 75.13
2007:
74.90
Living with HIV/AIDS, ages 15 to 49: less than 0.1 percent (2001).
Croats: 89.6 percent. Serbs: 4.5 percent. Croats are Roman Catholic, Serbs are Orthodox. Many Croats remain hostile to Serbs.
President Stipe Mesic, supported by a center-left coalition, has won a second five-year term, with 66 percent of the vote. He spoke of his pride in the maturity of Croatia's democracy.
Croatia is looking forward to entering the European Union before the end of the decade and has been moving to secure the minority (mainly Serb) rights that the European Union has as a condition for membership.
SOURCES:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Copyright © 2010 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.