Slovakia was ranked thirtieth among fifty-five countries evaluated according to their economic competitiveness by the Swiss Institute for Management Development (IMD) in cooperation with the F. A. Hayek Foundation, the SITA newswire reported. Representatives of the F. A. Hayek Foundation said that Slovakia had moved up four spots compared to last year. They said the greatest challenges facing Slovakia in increasing its competitiveness in the coming years are improving the effectiveness of law enforcement, better interconnection between the labour market and the education system, greater labour market flexibility, unification of tax collection and compulsory payments into insurance funds, greater effectiveness in healthcare, and the development of infrastructure for transport, IT and research and development.
“This government is actually in the middle of the election term. This means that statistical results or trends can already be attributed to the current government,” said the chairman of the A. Hayek Foundation supervisory board, Ivan Švejna. He thinks that Slovakia is experiencing good times, its economy is running well, and that the standard of living is rising. However, it is necessary to be cautious about the future and identify potential problems. In his opinion, the current government did not make any crucial mistakes from the macroeconomic point of view, though the future is questionable. The competitiveness ranking confirmed the leading position of the USA. Second was Singapore, followed by Hong Kong. Slovakia still lags behind the Czech Republic, which ranked 28th. The difference in competitiveness between post-communist countries and western countries can be best through the example of Austria, which ranked 14th, though the country is a neighbour of Slovakia. SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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