ANTI-CRISIS measures adopted by the government of Prime Minister Robert Fico to combat unemployment in Slovakia created or saved thousands of jobs in the country, according to an assessment developed by the Economy Ministry, the SITA newswire wrote. According to the assessment, by using active labour market policies the country’s labour offices reached over 3,000 agreements with employers to keep or create jobs between March and December 2009 and did so by using financial contributions of almost €35.6 million.
Of five new tools made available by the government, employers were most interested in receiving support to help them to cover obligatory health insurance and social payments for their employees. According to the ministry, this measure helped to maintain almost 47,000 jobs and the average support provided for each job was €315. Employers were also interested in state contributions to support creation of new work positions. Support extended in this way created 6,500 new work positions and the average support per one working position was €3,175.
The lowest interest was for state programs that supported self-employment in general and self-employment support programs for processing of agricultural products.
