It is obvious that this year we will exceed 100 thousand issued permits for residence and work of foreigners in Croatia, according to Žarko Katić, the State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, Jutarnji list writes on Friday.

This is almost 20 thousand more than last year, when the new Aliens Act came into force on January 1 and the system of determining annual quotas was abolished, and in 2021 a total of 82 thousand permits were issued.

That Croatia is now moving towards a record number of foreign workers is already clear from the fact that the Ministry of the Interior issued 45,829 of these permits by mid-May this year, and last year that number was exceeded only in the middle of summer.

At the beginning of August 2021, about 46,000 permits were issued to third-country nationals, as reported by the Ministry of the Interior, most of them in construction (22,799) and catering and tourism (12,396).

Katić presented the latest data on the number of residence and work permits and an estimate of their expected number this year at the Zagreb conference "Economy Beyond the Framework - Our New Neighbours in the Croatian Labour Market" and also noted that more and more workers from distant countries are coming to Croatia, and Nepal has thus become the fifth country in terms of requests for residence and work. The number of workers from India, Bangladesh and the Philippines is also growing.

Employers estimate that Croatia is around 30,000 workers short for this summer season, and by May 19, the Ministry of the Interior had issued 13,035 residence and work permits to foreigners in the hospitality sector, while 20,219 permits had been issued to the construction sector, which has so far employed more foreigners than tourism.