Western Balkans’ Countries In Focus Of Global Economic Crisis

The paper intends to analyze the impact of global economic crisis on the economies of Western Balkan Region. Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo are part of this Region. The purpose of the paper is not to analyze the global crisis impact on specific sectors of the economies of the Western Balkan Countries, indeed, it focuses mainly on the macroeconomic level, identifying and analyzing fluctuations of major macroeconomic indicators of the economies of this Region. In this regard the paper analyzes the trends of macroeconomics indicators that reflect the development and macroeconomic balances of those economies, such as GDP, the level of employment, inflation, budget deficit, trade relation, etc, in two periods of time: before the crisis,and during the years of crisis. Highlighting the deterioration of these indicators, the paper tries to identify factors that have contributed to these results, for example the level of opening of the economies of these countries, foreign direct investment, remittances, etc. Analysis of macroeconomic indicators shows that the world economic crisis of 2008 have interrupted the positive trend of the development of the Western Balkan Countries. Characteristic of this influence is the fact that the global crisis actually appeared 9 or 12 months later than what was reflected in the developed European countries. On the other hand, the trend of positive growth, although modest, in industrialized countries starting from 2010, has been confirmed in the Western Balkans as well. The paper has considered the different studies in view of economic development of the Western Balkan countries during the global economic crisis; based also on the data for economic development of these countries provided by the statistics IMF, and in particular on recent reports of the European Commission for EU Candidate and Pre-Accession Countries (October 2010 and January 2011).