New potential for southeast Europe says EBRD

The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) has recently released two different research papers that focus on the potential of countries based in southeast Europe (SEE).

The paper said “Tourism is an increasingly important source of revenue and driver of growth in many countries in the EBRD region and especially in south-eastern Europe.” The EBRD went on to say that SEE can expect further increases in tourism in the next few years and the benefits of this will be clear to see. When it comes to SEE countries, tourism is a huge source of income providing around 5% of GDP in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia. An increase of 25% was experienced between 2010 and 2014 (up to 59 million people) which has contributed to employment and a whole host of other areas.

The paper went on to discuss how there was little room for complacency considering tourism plays such a huge role; with these countries somewhat behind other destinations such as Spain and Italy, there is still improvement needed. Looking at the top 40 economies in the world, only three make the grade in Croatia, Cyprus and Greece (none of these rank higher than 31st). The EBRD document even listed areas that need working on and named development of infrastructure, price competitiveness, and the business environment as the top three.

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