Report on Productivity and Competitiveness 2022
The aim of the present Report on Productivity and Competitiveness (hereinafter referred to as the “Report”) is to identify the challenges of public policies in this area based on independent diagnosis and analysis of the development of productivity and competitiveness. This aim is in line with the EU Council Recommendation of 20 September 2016 on the establishment of National Productivity Boards (2016/C 349/01).
The structure of the report is based on the decision of the Working Group on Business Environment, Export and Investment of the Government Council for Competitiveness and Productivity of 19 May 2022. Since this is the first such report prepared under the auspices of the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic, it was designed to cover all key aspects affecting the productivity and competitiveness of Slovakia in some depth. Future reports should be more focused on a deeper examination of selected aspects of productivity and competitiveness in Slovakia.
The first chapter describes the development of productivity and its individual components, while trying to identify the reasons for the slowdown in its growth. Structural factors are considered mainly in the context of the standard period from the financial crisis to the pandemic crisis, as the multifactorial crises since 2020 may could mask deeper structural challenges. The second chapter deals with soft and hard indicators of competitiveness and their comparison within the EU. The third chapter looks at the density and quality of physical infrastructure (transport, energy and telecommunications), while the fourth chapter looks at the development of soft infrastructure, i.e. the skills necessary to raise the economy to a qualitatively higher level. The final chapter attempts to quantify the cost of doing business in terms of taxes, labour and energy prices.
The report focuses on the comparison of selected indicators and public policies, primarily with other V4 countries (Poland, Czechia and Hungary), with which Slovakia shares a similar starting position and similar economic development challenges. These indicators and policies are also compared with the EU average, or with Germany as the prime mover of the region’s economy, or with Estonia as a leader among the new EU Member States.
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