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Europe > Slovenia, Republic of

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Cover Selected Issues Papers
Labor Productivity in Slovenia: What is the Role of Intangible Investments?
Dmitriy Kovtun
Slovenia’s labor productivity growth has slowed since the late 2000s, weakening the country’s prospects of catching up with more advanced EU members. In addition to the gap in business investment, the composition of investment is also important as intangible investments are increasingly driving productivity in knowledge-based economies. This paper examines the investment gap using the extended definition of intangible investments from the Corrado-Hulten-Sichel (2005) framework, and discusses options for closing the gaps relative to the EU average and EU innovation leaders, highlighting the need for expanding access to finance for intangible investments, strengthening the innovation ecosystem, and enhancing overall business environment.
Keywords:
Intangible capital; Labor productivity; Growth accounting; Corrado-Hulten-Sichel framework; Innovation ecosystem; Slovenia; IMF country; IMF staff; issues paper; intangible investment; productivity in Slovenia; Productivity; Capital productivity; Total factor productivity; Global
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Slovenia: Financial Challenges in the Health Sector
Kue-Peng Chuah
Healthcare and long-term care expenditures are projected to rise significantly in Slovenia over the medium and long term, primarily due to rapid population aging. This paper examines the financial challenges confronting the health sector—the increasing demand for healthcare and long-term care, alongside a financing system that has not yet adapted to this evolving context—and outlines reforms to enhance the sector’s long-term sustainability.
Keywords:
Active aging; Aging population; Europe; Fiscal cost of aging; Healthcare; Healthcare expenditure; Healthcare financing; Healthcare reforms; Implications of aging; Long-term care; Long-term Sustainability; Slovenia; Sick leave benefits; IMF staff; issues paper; IMF country; Health insurance institute; Health care; Aging; Health care spending
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Republic of Slovenia: 2025 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; and Staff Report
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
The 2025 Article IV Consultation discusses that Slovenia has shown resilience in face of multiple shocks. Improving fiscal balances in 2021–2024 reversed a significant increase in public debt incurred during the pandemic and helped build fiscal buffers, while high scores on social indicators were preserved. Slovenia’s banking system appears healthy. The authorities have also embarked on important pension, long-term care, and health sector reforms to address challenges from population aging. Real gross domestic product contracted in the first quarter of 2025, as investment and exports fell amid weak external demand. Fiscal consolidation is needed to reduce public debt and preserve the country’s ability to respond to shocks. A gradual, growth-friendly fiscal consolidation would place the debt ratio firmly on a downward path. Fiscal reforms should continue. Implementing the 2025 pension reform is the linchpin to public pension sustainability. If demographic pressures were to intensify, further measures might be needed. Boosting Slovenia’s long-term growth requires comprehensive structural reforms focused on enhancing investment and productivity.
Keywords:
staff report; fund holding; exchange rate arrangement; FSAP mission; Imf executive board; country report No.; Wages; Anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT); Total factor productivity; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Republic of Slovenia: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper focuses on financial challenges faced by Slovenia in its health sector. Healthcare and long-term care expenditures are projected to rise significantly in Slovenia over the medium and long term, primarily due to rapid population aging. This paper analyzes the financial pressures facing Slovenia’s health sector, driven primarily by rapid population aging and a financing system that has not fully adjusted to these structural shifts. Slovenia exhibits one of the steepest aging trajectories among EU and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, creating a dual challenge: rising demand for healthcare and long-term care is intensifying expenditure needs, while a shrinking workforce is weakening revenue flows into the social health insurance system, the main source of sector financing. Although reforms are underway, additional measures are essential to reduce long-term fiscal risks. Key priorities include strengthening and diversifying the financing structure, improving efficiency, and accelerating policies that support active aging. Together, these reforms would help contain cost pressures, preserve equitable access to quality care, and ensure the long-term sustainability of the health system.
Keywords:
intangible investment; health financing; staff team; improving health indicator; IMF country; health care financing; Productivity; Labor productivity; Capital productivity; Health care; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
A Silver Lining? The European Energy Crisis through the Lens of Directed Technical Change
Ting Lan
,
Manasa Patnam
,
Frederik G Toscani
, and
Claire Li
This paper examines how productivity dynamics and, as a consequence, potential output, are affected by energy price shocks. We do this through the lens of a model of endogenous technical change where firms adjust their investment in non-energy productivity and energy productivity in reaction to the economic environment. Higher energy prices prompt a shift in investment from enhancing non-energy (capital and labor) productivity to improving energy efficiency. The resulting gains in energy efficiency act as an important macroeconomic buffer, but cannot fully offset the adverse input price effect and the transitional cost of shifting investment away from non-energy productivity. We thus find that the change in European energy prices following the 2022 shock reduces the level of euro area potential GDP by 0.8 percent by 2027. The impact on potential growth is temporary, and will have dissipated by that time. Energy efficiency itself is projected to rise by about three percent, offering a silver lining to the crisis. We estimate that the output effect would have been around two-thirds larger had energy efficiency not cushioned the impact of the price shock.
Keywords:
Productivity; Energy Price; Energy Efficiency; Directed Technical Change; Innovation; price shock; productivity tradeoff; energy productivity; productivity dynamics; Energy prices; Energy conservation; Potential output; Non-renewable resources; Europe; Global
Cover Selected Issues Papers
Improving Investment in Human Capital in Croatia: Efficiency of Public Spending on Education and Healthcare
Jean-Jacques Hallaert
Croatia’s public spending efficiency in education and healthcare can be increased. Increased efficiency would free fiscal resources that could be used for fiscal savings and/or improved outcomes. This would require reforms such as consolidating schools, increasing instructional hours, revising curricula, shifting emphasis from vocational education toward general education, and supporting tertiary enrollment. In healthcare, reforms should focus on telemedicine and primary care, reorganizing hospitals, and prioritizing preventive measures. These reforms would also foster human capital accumulation, reduce labor shortage and skills mismatches, boost productivity, and increase the creation and diffusion of innovation. They would improve potential growth.
Keywords:
Croatia; Education; Healthcare; Public Spending; Public Spending Efficiency; IMF country; IMF staff; healthcare expenditure; skills mismatch; issues paper; Education spending
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Republic of Croatia: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This Selected Issues paper focuses on the role of fiscal policies on inflation in Croatia. Fiscal policy has played a notable role in Croatia’s recent inflation dynamics. While fiscal measures supported growth during the pandemics and in 2022 with limited inflationary effects, fiscal loosening in 2024, particularly through public wage increases, accounted for more than 40 percent of the total contribution of endogenous shocks to headline Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices and about 60 percent of the total shocks that Croatia can influence. Fiscal policy should be mindful of its inflationary impact. With monetary policy set at the euro area level and macroprudential tools now actively deployed to contain the growth of households’ credit—thereby helping to reduce demand-driven inflationary pressures—fiscal policy, while pursuing its own objectives—should be tightened considerably to ensure a coherent overall policy mix to limit imbalances in the economy and safeguard macroeconomic stability.
Keywords:
HICP inflation; healthcare expenditure; headline HICP; tobacco consumption; efficiency gain; Inflation; Europe
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Euro Area: Publication of Financial Sector Assessment Program Documentation-Technical Note on Macroprudential Policy
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This Technical Note on Macroprudential Policy examines the complex but IMF-aligned institutional framework in the Euro Area (EA). While the European Central Bank (ECB) and European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) have robust frameworks for monitoring financial vulnerabilities, they need to further assess the links between banks and non-banks and address data gaps. The paper recommends that the Capital Requirements Directive should be revised to permit early activation of the countercyclical capital buffer even when cyclical systemic risks are not yet elevated. The ECB and ESRB should also promote consistent adoption of borrower-based measures across EU member states. Additionally, they should enhance the monitoring and assessment of vulnerabilities arising from bank-non-bank linkages, review member countries’ experiences with their institutional frameworks, and reassess compliance with revised recommendations to ensure timely and effective policy action. Authorities should streamline procedures for activating macroprudential tools and harmonize the mapping between banks’ O-SII scores and O-SII buffers to reduce heterogeneity, while allowing flexibility for member country-specific characteristics.
Keywords:
ECB Macroprudential decision-making; EU governance procedure; Assessment of Macroprudential policy; risk monitoring framework; tool availability; O-SII buffer; Macroprudential policy; Countercyclical capital buffers; Financial sector stability; Macroprudential policy instruments; Systemic risk; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Euro Area Policies: 2025 Annual Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for Member Countries
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
This paper presents Euro Area Policies’ 2025 Annual Consultation. Growth in the euro area is likely to stay moderate over 2025-27. Trade tensions and elevated uncertainty are expected to weigh on activity, despite some boost from higher defense and infrastructure spending. Risks to growth are on the downside while they are two sided for inflation. Trade policy uncertainty, potential tariff escalations, and ongoing geopolitical tensions may negatively impact demand and growth more than previously anticipated. The euro area financial sector assessment program (FSAP) found the banking system to be adequately capitalized and liquid overall, while some banks would dip into their buffers under stress. It identified financial stability risks stemming from interlinkages with non-bank financial institutions and called on the authorities to enhance data sharing, strengthen systemic risk monitoring, and conduct system-wide stress tests. The FSAP recommended fully implementing the international capital standard for banks (Basel III); strengthening the resources and prudential powers of the European authorities overseeing nonbank financial institutions; introducing a common deposit insurance system; making bail-in requirements more flexible; and strengthening arrangements for liquidity in resolution.
Keywords:
EU single market; EU budget; headline inflation; EU institution; growth potential; Inflation; Tariffs; Defense spending; Energy prices; Global; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Europe’s National-Level Structural Reform Priorities
Nina Budina
,
Oyun Erdene Adilbish
,
Diego A. Cerdeiro
,
Romain A Duval
,
Balázs Égert
,
Dmitriy Kovtun
,
Anh Thi Ngoc Nguyen
,
Augustus J Panton
, and
Michelle Tejada
Europe has a large and persistent per capita income gap with the United States. Deficiencies in total factor productivity, labor utilization, and capital intensity all play a role. While deeper intra-Europe integration is one key element towards closing these gaps, remaining structural domestic policy gaps with respect to most growth-friendly regulatory settings highlight the scope for complementary policy action at the national level. This paper compiles IMF staff’s structural policy priorities for European countries to lift output over the medium term, reviews key implementation challenges, and discusses complementarities with EU-level efforts. While addressing these domestic reform priorities will require overcoming long-standing political economy and—in some cases—technical obstacles to reform, successful implementation could entail sizeable medium-term gains of around 5, 7 and 9 percent for advanced European, Central Eastern and Southeastern European, and Western Balkan economies, respectively.
Keywords:
Productivity; potential output; structural reforms; labor markets; human capital; business regulations; product market reforms; innovation; governance; political feasibility.; reform priority; IMF working papers; reform priorities in Europe; Europe integration; IMF working paper 25/104; Capital markets; Structural policies; Tax gap; Europe