Business
STA, 12 August 2019 - More than 60 real estate agencies asked the Constitutional Court on Monday to review a recently adopted bill that limits commission fees for leasing real estate and other costs which real estate agencies can charge their clients.
According to Boštjan Udovič from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GZS), the 66 agencies involved want the top court to review and stay provisions limiting service commissions.
They argue the bill encroaches on the right to engage in free enterprise and the right to property, meaning it also violates the European Convention on Human Rights as well as EU law.
"The legislator failed to demonstrate any public benefit that would justify such an intervention in the rights of the plaintiffs. The goals allegedly pursued are general and have to do with housing policy and not with property brokerage," Udovič told the STA.
The legislative changes, originally passed on 11 July and again a week later following a National Council veto, entered in to force on 10 August and protect tenants against paying commissions for services provided by a real estate agency which was hired by the landlord.
They also introduced cap on commissions that can be charged by apartment rental agencies; the capped amount corresponds to one monthly rent, but should not go lower than 150 euro.
STA, 8 August 2019 - Demand for new workers in the April-to-June period was the strongest in construction, when the sector's job vacancy rate - showing how many vacancies were advertised by employers - reached 6.2%.
Around 3,800 vacancies were advertised in construction, which was followed by manufacturing (over 3,700) and commerce (over 2,500), latest Statistics Office data show.
Meanwhile, the overall job vacancy rate decreased by 0.2 of a percentage point to 2.3% over the previous quarter and by 0.3 points over the second quarter in 2018.
This means that the number of job vacancies dropped by around 1,400 to slightly more than 18,500 from the January-to-March period.
Demand for new labour force decreased the most in manufacturing and trade, by around 300 job vacancies in each of them (-0.4 points).
On the other hand, the number of occupied posts has continued to rise ever since the second quarter of 2014, the figures released on Thursday show.
Around 772,100 posts were occupied in the second quarter, 5,700 more than in the first one. 81.5% of all occupied posts were at companies with 10 or more workers.
The number of occupied posts increased the most in construction (+1,500) and trade (+1,000).
More details on this data can be found here, while all our stories on employment in Slovenia are here
STA, 8 August 2019 - The Swedish furniture giant Ikea obtained on Thursday a building permit for the shop it plans to build in Ljubljana's BTC City shopping district, the company said in a press release. Construction works are expected to start soon.
Vladislav Lalić, regional property and expansion manager at Ikea South East Europe labelled this a great success.
He thanked the Ljubljana municipality and experts at the Ministry for Environment and Spatial Planning for their efforts to overcome "all obstacles that were in our way".
He said the construction would be conducted in several phases, but the store was expected to open about a year after the start of construction.
Related: IKEAn’t Get No Satisfaction: A Brief History of IKEA Coming to Ljubljana, Part 1
The company also selected CGP for building the store after repeating the call for applications. Given that two years have passed since the initial call for applications, in which Pomgrad was selected, Ikea wanted to "make sure our pick reflected the current market trends," the company told the STA.
The deal with CGP was closed last month.
Ikea filed for the building permit in March after Ljubljana city council unanimously decided at the end of February to change the municipal spatial plan to allow it to start building its store.
The councillors endorsed the decision allowing Ikea to apply for an operating permit even though the required access road south of the planned shop has not been built yet.
The land needed to build the access road leading from Kajuhova Street was supposed to be acquired by the local authorities, but the acquisition has been marred by ownership complications.
The land is owned by company Protect GL, which is in receivership, and the municipality has failed to come to an agreement on the price with the official receiver.
In the summer of 2016, the municipality launched expropriation proceedings, which were suspended last autumn on the municipality's own initiative, as it wanted the proceedings to be carried out under the new legislation.
Ikea will now be able to soon launch the construction of the shop, which could open its doors in 2020. The 30,000 sq-metre shop has been estimated at EUR 80m and is expected to bring around 300 jobs.
STA, 7 August 2019 - The company managing construction of the new Divača-Koper rail track has annulled a public tender for the first of several bridges on the new track after weeks of very public controversy that has renewed concern about the mega project going off the rails financially.
"It has turned out that the cheapest bidder was not the best," Dušan Zorko, the head of 2TDK, told the press on Wednesday after the company determined the selected bidder had apparently forged its prior experience with the construction of such infrastructure.
A consortium led by Markomark Nival was initially selected to build a 170-metre bridge over Glinščica Valley. Its price, EUR 8 million, was significantly lower than rival bids by consortia led by Kolektor CGP (EUR 13.5 million) and Godina (EUR 14.3 million), but both have now been ruled as invalid because of excessive price.
Zorko said the tender would now be repeated as soon as possible. It will not be changed much, but 2TDK plans to impose a price cap. It also expects more builders to bid. "We had expected more offers, domestic and international. Unfortunately, there were only three."
The winning bid for the Glinščica bridge had originally been selected in mid-June, but it quickly became apparent things would not run smoothly.
One of the failed bidders reported noticing that an Excel spreadsheet form used to submit the bids had errors resulting in an incorrect final price, and then unofficial sources started questioning whether Markomark Nival, a little known builder, had in fact sufficient prior experience to build the bridge.
In general, Slovenian public tenders for construction projects tend to get bogged down in appeals and accusations that can significantly delay the start of construction works. The Karavanke tunnel expansion, for example, has been delayed by more than a year already as bidders fight it out among each other.
The popular perception is that the biggest construction industry players are adept at turning tenders in their favour, especially when they are up against foreign bidders.
In recent years two subsidiaries of industrial conglomerate Kolektor and the Murska Sobota builder Pomgrad in particular have been in the spotlight, having grown from mid-sized company into market leaders after the financial crisis bankrupted almost all major industry players.
Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek, a staunch advocate of the EUR 1 billion-plus rail project, said today she supported the decision of 2TDK to annul the tender.
"I stand firmly behind their decision not to succumb to the construction lobby," she said, adding: "I will not permit old practices of siphoning [taxpayer] funds."
Referring to the bid headlined by Kolektor CPG, Bratušek said three of the largest Slovenian builders had joined forces for the bid, which is "an indication of the creation of a monopoly and the desire to overcharge for construction services."
"Despite attacks targeting me, I will not let builders rig the system and offer prices up to 40% higher in public tenders. If necessary, tenders will be repeated."
All out stories on infrastructure in Slovenia are here
STA, 7 August 2019 - Slovenia's largest pharmacy chain, Lekarna Ljubljana, was the target of a ransomware attack on Monday, which temporarily incapacitated its information system and forced the chain to close for business.
After being closed throughout Tuesday due to the problem, the pharmacies reopened on Wednesday but they have so far been able to issue prescription drugs based on paper prescriptions only.
The city-owned chain said that the information system would be restored shortly, so the units are expected to be able to start issuing prescription medications normally later today both for those prescribed on paper and in electronic form.
No further details are available at this point, but Lekarna Ljubljana said that the incident had been reported to the law enforcement authorities.
The Ljubljana Police Department confirmed receiving notification about the system breach from Lekarna Ljubljana, saying they were still making enquiries.
According to information from the Health Ministry, the attack affected the pharmacy chain's local information system, which is not connected to the national e-Health system.
Tadej Hren from the national cybersecurity centre SI-CERT said that the investigation would pinpoint where exactly the breach occurred and what kind of data the hackers had been able to access.
Ransom crypto viruses encrypt all user data files they are able to access. This type of attacks have been common in Slovenia since 2012.
Hren said that in all the cases they dealt with the victims had been picked randomly as part of a wider hacking campaign. The ransom for a decryption key in such cases ranges from EUR 1,000 to EUR 2,000.
In the past year SI-CERT has also been detecting more sophisticated attacks on large companies or institutions, which involve spy viruses which detect the scope of the damage that can be caused before a cryptovirus encrypts everything the hackers can access.
Information available to SI-CERT indicates the attack on Lekarna Ljubljana was likely a more sophisticated one because it is not believed to have been part of a larger campaign.
Lekarna Ljubljana operates more than 50 pharmacies in the capital Ljubljana and other towns, including Grosuplje, Ivančna Gorica, Idrija, Logatec, Vrhnika, Borovnica and Velike Lašče.
Prescription drugs have been issued normally at 14 private pharmacies with concession operating in Ljubljana.
All our stories on hacking Slovenia are here
STA, 7 August 2019 - The Slovenian subsidiary of the Italian banking group Unicredit posted EUR 16 million in consolidated profit in the first half of the year, a marginal increase of 0.3% on the same period a year ago, shows the annual report released by the parent bank.
Unicredit Banka Slovenija and Unicredit Leasing saw their operating profit increase by almost 6% to EUR 19 million in the same period. Operating revenue rose by 7.2% to EUR 42 million and net interest revenue was up 1.3% to EUR 23 million.
The bank formed EUR 5 million in net write-downs on loans, a decline of 7.4% compared with the first half of 2018.
Unicredit Group reported a net profit of EUR 2.16 billion for the first half of the year, up 1% year-on-year.
All out stories on banking in Slovenia can be found here
STA, 5 August 2019 - Slovenia's 10-year bonds have recently traded at sub-zero rates on the secondary market for the first time ever, whereas the country had a hard time selling its bonds at a 7% rate during the financial crisis in 2013.
The yield on Slovenia's 10-year bond dropped below zero on Friday, dropping further to minus 0.06% today, the business daily Finance reported, quoting Bloomberg.
The drop to the negative territory is part of a broader trend of falling yields for euro-denominated state bonds witnessed over the past days.
It comes after the European Central Bank said it would further ease its monetary policy and amid raised uncertainties in the European and world economies, while investors are looking for returns elsewhere.
According to the MTS Bonds.com platform, the 10-year bond issued on 14 March and further expanded on 8 July trades at minus 0.01%.
When Slovenia secured another EUR 350 million in July to expand the original 10-year bond issue, which is due in March 2029, the bond had a yield of 0.157%.
If investors buy it on the secondary market now, they find it acceptable to get a lower return then they would pay for it today.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that a newly issued Slovenian long-term bond would also have a negative rate.
While sub-zero rates are new for Slovenia's long-term debt, its short-term bonds have traded at sub-zero yields for several years.
STA, 2 August 2019 - The operator of Slovenia's sole maritime port of Koper is hosting on Friday a delegation from Nagoya, the largest Japanese port in terms of transshipment, for talks on how to expand cooperation. Koper has no direct commercial maritime link with Japan, while it does cooperate with the Japanese Ocean Network Express (ONE).
The delegation featuring more than 30 representatives of the public and private sectors, the port of Nagoya and the chamber of commerce and industry from the city is in Slovenia before making stops in Italy and Croatia.
Representatives of Luka Koper presented the Japanese with the advantages of the port of Koper and the Adriatic Sea in general.
Japan is a major trade partner to Luka Koper, with last year's transshipment reaching almost half a million tonnes. The bulk of the transshipment are containers and cars, with Japan being one of the largest car producers in the world.
The port of Nagoya is the largest and busiest trading port in Japan, with an annual transshipment of 197 million tonnes, including 2.7 million container units and 1.4 million cars.
Luka Koper chairman Dimitrij Zadel told the press on the sidelines of the visit that efforts were being made to establish a direct link with Japan, noting that the port had been cooperating with ONE as of last year.
Today's presentation was also attended by representatives of Japanese companies which are already present in the region.
Tamas Tanarki of the Hungarian subsidiary of Yusen Logistics said that in the last decade, Japanese investors had started taking the Adriatic route into account and perceiving it as a good solution for their cargo transport.
He sees no much room for the Adriatic ports to compete with the North Sea ports in the near future, but he said it was realistic to expect that trade with these ports could increase by between 10% and 15%.
Tanarki thinks that what is important for the ports in north Adriatic is to agree on cooperation, as Trieste, Koper and Rijeka are only 70 kilometres apart, which is considered as one sole port on the global scale.
STA, 2 August 2019 - Macro stress tests conducted by the Slovenian central bank have shown that the country's banking system is stable. "In the baseline as well as stress scenario, the Slovenian banking system has been shown to have appropriate capital adequacy," Banka Slovenije said on Friday.
"Slovenian banks are relatively well capitalised and have improved the quality of their credit portfolios, which is the consequence of successful reduction of non-performing exposure in recent years," the central bank said.
The stress tests were conducted using two macroeconomic scenarios designed to check the resilience of banks to shocks.
The baseline scenario considered the most likely macroeconomic trends through 2021 based on the bank's own forecasts, with the stress scenario assuming a downturn - a contraction of the economy by a cumulative 2.3% over three years.
Macro stress tests are top-down exercises for the entire banking system and are seen as complimentary to supervisory stress tests, which are bottom-up exercises focused on each individual bank.
STA, 31 July 2019 - Slovenian beer exports grew by almost 20% in 2018 year-on-year, while hop exports increased by 17%, showed the Statistics Office data released on Wednesday, ahead of International Beer Day, which is observed on the first Friday in August.
The country's beer exports exceeded imports last year - exports topped EUR 34 million, while imports reached EUR 28.5 million.
Slovenia exported most of its beer to Croatia (30%), Italy (21%) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (19%), while most of Slovenian beer imports, which decreased slightly last year (by 3%), came from Austria (40%), Croatia (19%) and the Czech Republic (10%).
The number of Slovenian beer makers is on the rise - there were 61 registered in Slovenia last year, which is quite an increase compared to 2010 when there were only 13 of them.
Beer lovers paid some 2.8 euro on average for half a litre of pale ale in pubs or some 90 cents in stores in 2018.
Slovenian hop growers produced more than 3,000 tonnes of hop, which is a record amount since 1998 and a 43% increase on 2017.
Slovenia ranks third in hop production among EU countries, following Germany and the Czech Republic. The country's hop exports outweighed imports by far, amounting to EUR 26 million. On the other hand, hop imports totalled EUR 2.1 million.
Almost half of Slovenian exported hop went to Germany last year, with China (16%) and the UK (10%) being target markets as well.
The UK’s Ascent Resources, often in the news in Slovenia for its long-running and so far less than successful attempts to exploit it’s Petišovci gas field with the use of hydraulic stimulation, has announced a series of cost-cutting measures and managerial changes. As reported by Morning Star, the moves are an attempt to cut costs by 50%, and are needed because of the delays to the Slovenian project. As the website notes:
In its Slovenian operations, Ascent said it will cut the number of its employees and halt "all non-essential expenditure", including its May order of compression equipment for the Pg-10 and Pg-11A wells.
The company is also changing its CEO, with Chief Operating Officer John Buggenhagen replacing Colin Hutchinson, who will stay with company on a part-time, interim basis as a finance director.
Also leaving the company's board is Cameron Davies, retiring as chair having been a company director since 2010.
The new CEO, a geophysicist who has been working in various capacities at Ascent since January of this year, said: “we continue to pursue an appeal against the Environment Ministry in Slovenia, in conjunction with our joint venture partner at Petišovci, and we are prepared to initiate legal action against the Republic of Slovenia, who we believe is in breach of European Union law.”
Shares in the company were down 12% at 0.26 pence each in London at the close of trading, Monday.
The full report can be seen here, while all our reporting on Ascent Resources is here.
