Slovenia
Slovenia recently implemented a new coherent public sector salary system, after drawn out negotiations with representative trade unions for public employees. The government was innovative and resourceful in the way it managed both the reform process and the required bargaining. The new system is an improvement and an achievement.
The recent reform of the public sector salary system provides a necessary foundation; however, further reform is needed. Slovenia faces a number of contextual challenges on its path to a modernised public sector salary system. This last chapter sets out the specific findings of the review and makes proposals for the way forward.
This review of the Slovenian public sector salary system was requested by the Government of Slovenia as part of a broader OECD Public Governance Review of Slovenia. To increase its efficiency and effectiveness, the public administration needs to have staff in the right place at the right time and with the right skills, motivated to perform. The public sector salary system provides the backbone for helping to achieve this. This review analyses the current system and makes recommendations for further reform.
The deleveraging of the corporate sector and a weak external environment will weaken growth throughout the first half of 2012, with both consumption and investment flat. Unemployment has risen to close to 8.5% and inflation remains low. Activity is projected to begin to recover gradually thereafter, with increasing confidence and a pick-up in world trade bolstering private consumption and investment.
Der Schuldenabbau im Unternehmenssektor und ein schwaches außenwirtschaftliches Umfeld werden das Wachstum während der ersten Jahreshälfte 2012 dämpfen, und sowohl der Konsum als auch die Investitionen sind verhalten. Die Arbeitslosigkeit ist auf nahezu 8,5% gestiegen, und die Inflation ist nach wie vor gering. Die Wirtschaftstätigkeit wird sich den Projektionen zufolge anschließend allmählich wieder zu erholen beginnen, da sich das Vertrauen festigt und eine Wiederbelebung des Welthandels den privaten Verbrauch und die Investitionen stärkt.
Le désendettement des entreprises et la faiblesse de l’environnement extérieur pèseront sur la croissance au premier semestre de 2012, la consommation et l’investissement restant stables. Le taux de chômage a augmenté à près de 8.5 % et l’inflation reste peu élevé. L’activité devrait amorcer une reprise progressive ensuite, à la faveur d’un regain de confiance et du redressement du commerce mondial qui stimuleront la consommation et l’investissement privés.
Despite its relatively small size, Slovenia is a good illustration of the potential of regional development policy. Its internal diversity, openness and experience of rapid structural change all reinforce the need for efficient reallocation of resources, while underscoring the need to take account of the potential positive and negative externalities associated with the shifting structure of economic activity.
With 36% of the national territory falling under Natura 2000 protection, spatial planning is particularly challenging and yet also particularly important. Given the absence of a regional tier of government and the extreme fragmentation of the municipal level of authority, Slovenia needs to develop capacity at intermediate levels, to address policy problems that are best tackled at a scale in between the local and the national.
Overall, Slovenia’s regions have experienced strong growth since the mid-1990s. While there has been some increase in inter-regional disparities in both growth performance and levels of GDP per capita, the increase in disparities was driven largely by the dynamism of the capital region, and even the worst-performing regions have been growing faster than the OECD average. The widening of interregional disparities during the period of strong growth before 2009 was in any case typical of economies in transition, and inter-regional disparities remain relatively low by OECD standards. Nevertheless, two regions stand out as chronic under-performers, with per capita GDP levels falling further and further below the national average. They represent a cause for concern, as their poor performance could, unless reversed, impose significant long-term costs in the future. While the recent crisis hit Slovenia hard, its aggregate impact on labour markets has been in line with the OECD average; the unemployment rate rose from 4.4% in 2008 to 5.9% in 2009. However, the spike in unemployment was geographically quite concentrated: more than half of job losses (60%) occurred in only two of Slovenia’s twelve regions.
The OECD Secretariat would like to thank the Slovenian authorities at the national and sub-national levels for their co-operation and support during the review process. Special thanks are given to Mr. Gorazd Jenko, Mr. PeterWostner, Mr. Igor Strmšnik and Ms. Zlata Ploštajner, from the Government Office for Local Self-Government and Regional Policy (GOSP), for the overall co-ordination of the project, as well as to the other experts from the Slovenian team. The OECD is also grateful to the authorities of Dolenjska and Bela Krajina, Gorenjska, Južnoprimorska and Pomurska for hosting on-site OECD study missions.
Slovenia is shifting the focus of regional policy from “passive” redistribution to a more pro-active emphasis on enhancing sustainable growth in all regions. However, much remains to be done in terms of translating this shift into policy instruments and institutional arrangements. Many of these challenges have become more acute as a result of the crisis and the need to balance fiscal consolidation against support for a still-fragile recovery. The recently adopted Law on Balanced Regional Development addresses some of these issues, but much will depends on how the law is actually implemented. This chapter starts by identifying three key challenges to effective multi-level governance: capacities for regional policy, municipal fragmentation and relevant scale for regional policy, and the lack of information for regional growth. Section 3.2 assesses how Slovenia should address these challenges and proposes concrete steps to be taken in a number of areas.
This annex extends the analysis of regional Beveridge curves presented in the chapter. Section 1.A4.1. divides Slovenia’s 12 TL3 regions into four overlapping geographic groups – the north-east, the centre, the south-east and the western regions – and compares both the level relationships and trends over time. Some regions are included in more than one group, since the aim to assess the relative efficiency of labour markets in contiguous regions. These scattered examples provide strong evidence of different efficiency levels in labour markets between neighbouring regions as well as different trends over time, suggesting that these markets are highly segmented.
At the beginning of this new millennium, regional economies are confronting momentous changes. The globalisation of trade and economic activity is increasingly testing their ability to adapt and maintain their competitive edge. There is a tendency for income and performance gaps to widen between and within regions, and the cost of maintaining social cohesion is increasing. Rapid technological change and greater use of knowledge are offering new opportunities for local and regional development but demand further investment from enterprises, reorganisation of labour and production, more advanced skills and environmental improvements.