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International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper focuses on boosting productivity in Slovenia. Slovenia’s ageing population sets a constraint on the contribution of labor to gross domestic product in the end.Only achieve sustained increases in income and living standards can, therefore, through investment in physical and human capital and, more importantly, through enhancing productivity, historically the key growth driver. This paper summarizes historical trends in growth and productivity in Slovenia, examines the country’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of key factors affecting productivity identified in the literature. Since the scope for future labor contributions to growth in Slovenia is limited for demographic reasons—apart from further improvements to labor quality—the focus of economic growth policies should be on reinvigorating private investment, which has been low over the past decade, and pursuing labor and product market reforms that boost total factor productivity growth.
International Monetary Fund. Fiscal Affairs Dept.
This paper discusses key findings and recommendations of the Technical Assistance report on establishing a spending review process in Slovenia. Slovenia’s fragile fiscal situation requires further consolidation to ensure that the upward trajectory of public debt does not threaten long-term fiscal sustainability. Spending in the education sector is the fourth-highest spending level. Spending pressures also need to be explicitly identified, quantified, and included in the spending review to better inform the government’s decision making process. There is also a need to update existing performance information associated with government expenditure programs to ensure that more meaningful information focused on achieving desired outcomes is developed to better inform future reviews.
International Monetary Fund
The first analysis focuses on external stability, an important issue in view of Croatia’s external imbalances and the requirements of the IMF’s 2007 Decision on Bilateral Surveillance. The paper shows that the real exchange rate is broadly in line with economic fundamentals and that external debt dynamics are sustainable as long as macroeconomic policies remain strong. The second analysis finds significant inefficiencies in Croatia’s social spending. It also discusses several reform measures to reduce inefficiencies in public spending and generate budgetary savings to reduce the general government deficit.
Ms. Victoria Gunnarsson
and
Mr. Etibar Jafarov
This paper assesses the relative efficiency of government spending on health care and education in Croatia by using the so-called Data Envelopment Analysis. The analysis finds evidence of significant inefficiencies in Croatia's spending on health care and education, related to inadequate cost recovery, weaknesses in the financing mechanisms and institutional arrangements, weak competition in the provision of these services, and weaknesses in targeting public subsidies on health care and education. These inefficiencies suggest that government spending on health and education could be reduced without undue sacrifices in the quality of these services. The paper identifies ways to do that.
Mr. Todd D. Mattina
and
Ms. Victoria Gunnarsson
This paper assesses the relative efficiency and flexibility of public spending in Slovenia compared to the advanced and new EU member states. Spending on health care, education, and social protection is relatively high in Slovenia without achieving correspondingly better outcomes. Inefficiencies appear to stem from the financing mechanisms for social services, institutional arrangements, and the weak targeting of social benefits. In addition, the composition of spending appears to be strongly tilted towards nondiscretionary items that reduce the fiscal room for maneuver. Greater flexibility is needed to facilitate the reallocation of relatively inefficient expenditure into higher priorities. In this manner, medium-term expenditure rationalization can focus on reducing inefficient outlays rather than restraining traditionally flexible components of the budget, such as public investment.
International Monetary Fund
Poverty risk is most marked for children, displaced persons and returnees, unemployed, and people with low education. Basic goals of the macroeconomic framework of the mid-term development strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina are to reduce the overall public expenditures, lower the public debt, and to bring the current account deficit to a sustainable level through fiscal consolidation. The strategy is to attract more foreign investment, create conditions for a more efficient privatization process, and to ensure new cycles of donor assistance.