THE IMPACT OF FORESTRY AND WOOD INDUSTRY ON CROATIAN ECONOMY

Forestry and wood industry are important segments of the Croatian economy. Their importance in this article is quantified using the input-output analysis. Direct and indirect effects, appearing through production chains and intermediate consumption of other industries are assessed. Data shows that there are significant direct and indirect effects of forestry and wood industry Estimated multipliers exhibit high values; especially the output multiplier in section 20 of NACE classification, namely Wood products, reaching the value of 1.94. This is the highest multiplier among all other industries. This is followed by Forestry, section 02 with the multiplier amounting to 1.77 and Furniture, section 36, with multiplier 1.76. The same conclusions are drawn regarding the gross value added multiplier. In terms of the employment multiplier, direct effect is highest in section Furniture, 5.4. Overall, wood cluster has an above average value of multiplier in comparison to other industries. However, effects are concentrated in the wood cluster itself, not scattered across the rest of the economy. It makes indirect effects less important for the rest of the Croatian economy. In comparison to other EU NMS, the share of imported inputs in Forestry and wood industry are rather small. As for the structure of value added in Croatia, the share of employee compensation is very high, amounting to 30.9%. It is the highest share among peer groups and is the most similar to the Slovenian wood industry share. High level of labor costs is not followed by deployment of progressive technologies in order to provide competitiveness gains and increase the share of high value added products in Forestry and wood industry.