Croatia attracted EUR 399 million in foreign direct investment in the first quarter of this year, or 60 per cent less than in the same period of 2008, figures from the Croatian National Bank (HNB) show.

"In the first quarter of 2009 the net influx of foreign direct investment was EUR 0.4 billion, or just a third of the amount generated in the same period of last year, which is the consequence of a substantially lower influx of foreign direct investment in Croatia," HNB analysts said in the bank's latest quarterly bulletin.

Austria continued to be the biggest investor in Croatia, with EUR 325.5 million invested in the first quarter, followed by the Netherlands with EUR 95.4 million, France with EUR 30.8 million, and Slovenia with EUR 29.9 million.

Figures show that Germans invested only EUR 2.7 million in the reporting period, while Hungarian investments registered an outflow of EUR 72.3 million.

On the other hand, Croatian companies operating abroad withdrew EUR 10.9 million worth of investments.
From 1993 through March 2009, foreign direct investment in Croatia totalled EUR 21.43 billion, while at the same time Croatian companies invested EUR 2.27 billion abroad.