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The goal of this article is to provide a deeper insight to the overall contribution of the export of food products to the Croatian economy and to estimate the direct and indirect impact of the international competitiveness of food producers on other domestic sectors. The authors measure the importance of the food sector by employing both the constant market share (CMS) and the input-output analysis. The results indicate that a loss in competitiveness in the Croatian food industry was the most important factor that determined the decreasing share of national companies in the period from 2009, when the global recession started, up to 2013, when Croatia joined the EU. EU membership strongly and positively influenced the performance of Croatian food exports. The negative trend regarding the share of the international food market was reversed. Besides having a direct impact on the export performance of the food industry, the international competitiveness of food producers indirectly affects other domestic companies whose products are used as intermediate inputs in the food industry. The study also presents a benchmark of results with previous research for EU countries, which rarely included Croatia before the accession in 2013. As far as output and value added are concerned, multipliers for the food industry are relatively significant and higher than the national average, and the food industry could be assessed as one of the key Croatian economic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]