Croatian Kuna
Currency

Overview

Croatia is a country in Southeastern and Central Europe. Zagreb is its capital. Croatia has Slovenia in the north, Herzegovina and Bosnia in the southeast, Hungary in the northeast, Montenegro in the southeast and Serbia in the east. Croats arrived in the 17th century and retained its sovereignty for two centuries. After WWII, Croatia announced independence on June 25, 1991 and became a sovereign state.

Croatia is a UN member, and also the member of NATO, the Council of Europe, CEFTA and the World Trade Organization. Croatia is an emerging as well as developing economy.

Currency

Croatian Kuna is the currency. The ISO of Croatian Kuna is HRK and this is subdivided into 100 lipa. The Croatian National Bank issues the kuna and the Croatian Monetary Institute mints the coins. ‘Kuna’ means ‘marten’ and this term is given as it is made using marten pelts as units and this is valued in medieval trading.

There is no relation to other currencies having name as ‘koruna’ or ‘kruna’. Similarly, ‘lipa’ means ‘linden tree’ (lime).

History

In Roman periods, taxes were collected in the form of highly valued marten skins from upper & lower Pannonia provinces that are today’s Slavonia and Hungary.

This is the reason that ‘marturina’ the Croatian word emerged derived from ‘martus’ the Latin word. In fact several Slavic states had kuna as the currency unit and was equal to 1/25 gryvna silver.

During the middle Ages, foreign currencies entered Croatia. During 1260 and 1380, a silver coin adorned by marten in the name of banovac was made by the Croatian Viceroys, but this also gradually disappeared with the declining autonomy within the kingdom.

The Croatian kuna currency came once again in 1939 and in 1941 they introduced it. This currency was in circulation until 1945 and then disappeared on becoming a socialist state.

Present Value

Kuna since 1994 was the modern Croatian kuna giving an end to Croatian dinar such that the exchange rate was 1000 dinars= 1 kuna. The Croatian National Bank has a long-time policy to keep the kuna exchange rate with euro as a stable range and the country is on the accession path to the European Union and is planning to join with the European Monetary System.