At its meeting today, the CNB Council examined recent economic and monetary indicators and adopted the Semi-annual Information on the Financial Condition, the Degree of Price Stability Achieved and the Implementation of Monetary Policy for the first half of 2016, which is to be submitted to the Croatian Parliament.
Monthly indicators suggest an uptick in economic activity in the third quarter of 2016, largely due to a positive performance of the tourism sector. Favourable labour market trends continued, although at a slightly slower pace than in the first half of the year. The annual rate of decrease in consumer prices decelerated from –1.5% in August to –0.9% in September, with the refined petroleum product prices' negative contribution to inflation down by 0.4 percentage points. In September and at the beginning of the fourth quarter of this year, the CNB continued to implement an expansionary monetary policy by increasing the amounts of regular weekly reverse repo operations and reducing the fixed repo rate. Lending by domestic credit institutions started to grow this year, in tune with the economic recovery already underway. Fiscal data for the first half of the year suggest a strong fiscal adjustment, with favourable trends continuing during the summer months.
The CNB Council agreed with the decision of the Supervisory Board of Hrvatska poštanska banka d.d. to reappoint Domagoj Karadjole and Mladen Mrvelj as Members of the Management Board for another term of office and with the decision of the Supervisory Board of Raiffeisenbank Austria d.d., Zagreb on the reappointment of Vesna Ciganek-Vuković as Member of the Management Board. The decision of the Supervisory Board of Sberbank d.d., Zagreb to appoint Mario Hrenjak as Chairman of the Management Board was also approved.