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Conference: Productivity - a Challenge to Slovenian Economy
In cooperation with the European Commission Representation in Slovenia, the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development organised a discussion with domestic and foreign experts on possible policies to enhance productivity growth.
Discussion with domestic and foreign experts: Wednesday, 14 June 2017, Ljubljana (Hotel Union).
In the last few years Slovenia has been making progress in terms of economic development and the welfare of its population, and its convergence with more developed countries has resumed. However, Slovenia still lags behind the average level of development in the EU by approximately one fifth. A great deal of variation in development and the living standard of the population is explained by differences in productivity, one of the main drivers of economic development. Given the falling number of the working-age population as a result of demographic change, increasing productivity will gain on importance in determining future economic development. All of this is also pointed out by the European Commission in one of its recommendations for Slovenia within the European semester.
In cooperation with the European Commission Representation in Slovenia, the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development therefore organised a discussion with domestic and foreign experts on possible policies to enhance productivity growth.
It was divided into two sessions:
In the first session Mr Boštjan Vasle, Director IMAD, presented the conclusions of the analysis of the key challenges of the Slovenian economy, in which, in addition to fiscal policy, we also focused on the issue of productivity.
In the second session we presented results of the analysis of factors that affect productivity and the possibilities for increasing productivity in Slovenia (Mr Aleš Delakorda, IMAD) and discuss the productivity in Slovenian enterprises with regard to their structural characteristics (Polona Domadenik, Faculty of Economics, Ljubljana, who wrote a paper on the topic of productivity for the European Commission). Uroš Rosa, executive director of the Akrapovič company, will explain how the issue of productivity is addressed in their company. Mr Peter Gal (OECD) and Mr Robert Stehrer (Wiener Institut fȕr Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche) will present measures and examples of good practice from abroad, while Mr John Maher (National Competitiveness Council, Ireland) will talk about the institutional aspects of dealing with the productivity challenge in Ireland.