Montenegro’s tourism revenues reached €997 million last year, just €50 million short of the all-time best recorded in 2019, Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic said on Monday.

“This is a clear indicator that the government is working to expand the tourist season and reaching its goal through the #Montenegro365 campaign – tourism every day of the year,” Abazovic said in a tweet.

At the same time, tourism revenues in the last quarter of the year reached the highest-ever quarterly total of €123 million, he said, a clear indicator that the Adriatic country’s tourism sector has rebounded after a plunge taken in 2020-21 because of the coronavirus.

The country of 619,000 people, which unilaterally adopted the euro after breaking away from its union with Serbia in 2006, had a GDP of $5.86 billion in 2021, according to official data from the World Bank.

Montenegro has been negotiating for EU membership since 2012 but has made little progress in the last three years, and talks virtually ground to a halt in 2022 as the country entered a prolonged government crisis, with early elections possible this year.

(Zoran Radosavljevic | EURACTIV.com)