TECHNOLOGY FORESIGHT SUMMIT - Unido

Part three. Ministerial Round Table 101
the problematic topics is that priorities or priority directions have to be
defined. In this field some structural gaps or mismatches exist. For example,
in Slovenia, 45 per cent of the State tax goes to agriculture and if we ask
whether Slovenia is an agricultural country, we will all agree that it is not.
We are actually, we want to be a knowledge-based society.
Based on the different analyses, international and national technology
mapping setting all current status and societal framework, we have defined
our programme for entrepreneurship and competitiveness up to the year 2006
where knowledge for development is the key priority, increasing the competitiveness
of enterprises. The second one is creating a stimulating environment
for innovation and entrepreneurship.
The third one (is to create conditions for improving competitiveness).
Sometimes it is very difficult to persuade even the people in government that
these goals are the right ones. So we deliberately, by pointing out different
problems which we have, have been able to create such a critical environment
or view of society in Slovenia on different issues that even resulted in,
a competitiveness scoreboard. The result of this critical mass of opinion in
Slovenia resulted that we are in 38th place and, for example, with one indicator
which is technology transfer from the university into industry, we are
actually at the last place. We want to reorient our sciences towards the industries
so we are deliberately putting this issue in front. But if you look, for
example, for firm analyses based on firm date, for example, World Economic
Forum, we are in 27th place so this means much higher. But nevertheless,
all-in-all, we are thinking that we should develop in a further direction, we
should learn to work together so this means we are now starting the clustering
process, we are actually encouraging companies to be part of framework
programmes. We are trying to introduce venture capital and build an
infrastructure which will support productivity and innovation.
One of the last things, you know that in Slovenia we are relatively good
at measuring the GDP for R&D, 1.51, from this 0.71 from the State and 0.8
from industry. We can set our goals that we want to achieve: 3 per cent by
2010. You can be sure that from the governmental side it is not a problem,
0.3 per cent of the GDP can be achieved in this period. But the most problems
will be on the industrial side, so this is also one of the reasons why we
are encouraging the dialogue and the view that there is not enough transfer
of knowledge into our products. But by doing this we actually want to stimulate
the Slovenian knowledge-base, it will come into our products so that
industry will be much more interested in investments into R&D.
Slovenia is generally considered as one of the best developed CEE countries
or best prepared for entry into the European Union. But when measuring
costs against the most competitive European countries, we see that
actually we are lagging behind. In 1999, we were 27.4 behind the best developed
countries and in 2002, we were actually 45 per cent, so this means that
there is still enough place and there will be enough drive from the government
and also public opinion that we will manage to achieve the goals which
we set until 2010.