development report 2012 - UMAR

122 Development Report 2012
Indicators of Slovenia’s development
Share of non-financial
market services
The share of non-financial market services in value
added increased further in 2010. Non-financial
market services 1 generated 44.1% of total value added
in 2010 (39.7% of all persons in employment), 1.6 p.p.
more than at the adoption of Slovenia’s Development
Strategy (2005). The increase was underpinned by
growth in knowledge-intensive services 2 (1.2 p.p. of
value added), which had also increased their share in
the structure of value added in the whole period since
the beginning of the economic crisis (2008–2010).
The faster growth of knowledge-intensive services is
associated with the catching-up process, given that
Slovenia lags behind advanced economies in this
area. The increase in their share in the structure of
the economy in the period of the economic crisis is
otherwise due to a more pronounced shrinkage in other
activities (in particular manufacturing, construction
and traditional services). Among other (non-financial)
market services, predominantly traditional services
(trade, transportation and accommodation and food
service activities) play the most important role. Their
economic importance increased notably in the period
of favourable economic trends (2005–2008), when value
added was growing vigorously in most trade sectors,
road freight transport, warehousing and support
activities for transportation. Since the outbreak of the
economic crisis (2008), the share of traditional services
in value added of the economy has shrank somewhat,
but remains higher than in 2005.
Business services are still among the fastest
growing knowledge-intensive services, but they
still lag considerably behind the SDS target. After
stagnating in 2003–2006, the share of knowledgeintensive
non-financial market services (which include
1
Activities of the Standard Classification of activities (SKD):
wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles (G),
transportation and storage (H), accommodation and food
service activities (I), information and communication activities
(J), real estate (L), professional, scientific and technical activities
(M), administrative and support service activities (N), arts,
entertainment and recreation (R), other service activities (S),
activities of households as employers (T).
2
According to Eurostat’s methodology, knowledge-intensive
services comprise water transport (section 50), air transport
(section 51), motion picture, video and television programme
production, sound recording and music publishing activities (59
and 60), telecommunications (61), computer programming and
other information service activities (sections 62 and 63), scientific
and technical activities (M), employment activities (78), security
and investigation activities (80–82).
3
As of this year, SORS started to publish data on individual
segments of national accounts in line with the Regulation
No. 1893/2006 establishing the NACE Revision 2 statistical
classification of economic activities. The new classification (SKD
telecommunications, certain business services 3 and
some transport activities) increased in the following
years (except in 2009), accounting for 13.0% of total
value added in 2010. Growth was largely generated by
business services. In the period of implementing SDS
(2005–2010), their share rose by 1.4 p.p. (in the last year
by 0.4 p.p.), totalling 10.9% in 2010. Among knowledgeintensive
business services, the shares of information,
professional, scientific and technical activities and
some administrative and support service activities
grew most notably in both the whole period and in
2010 Even though it grew significantly in the latter part
of the decade, in 2010 the share of business services
still lagged significantly behind the SDS target for 2013,
i.e. 12% of value added on Slovenia’s economy.
The gap between Slovenia and the EU average in the
share of non-financial market services in value added
narrowed further in 2010. Nevertheless, Slovenia’s
greatest development potential still lies particularly
in knowledge-intensive services. Slovenia’s lag behind
the EU average in terms of the share of non-financial
market services in the structure of the economy has
decreased in recent years, totalling 3.8 p.p. in 2010. This
was mainly a result of Slovenia’s catching up in business
services, while its share of predominantly traditional
services (trade, transportation, accommodation and
food service activities) has exceeded the EU average for
several years. 4 Among business services, the gap with
the EU average narrowed most notably in professional,
scientific and technical activities, also in information
service activities. All these activities combined make
up the largest share of knowledge-intensive services. In
2009, for which the most recent international data are
available, the share of knowledge-intensive business
services was 1.3 p.p. smaller than in the EU (in 2000:
3 p.p.; in 2005: 1.6 p.p.). In view of a relatively large
increase in the share of business services in Slovenia
in 2010, we estimate that Slovenia’s lag behind the
EU average narrowed further that year, although the
gap with the most advanced countries (used as the
benchmark of development in setting SDS objectives)
remains considerable (see Figure 2). Given that
knowledge-intensive services could play an important
role both as activities with high value added and as
competitiveness factors of other activities, Slovenia still
has significant development potential in this area.
2008) brings certain changes in the release of data on service
activities. Real estate, renting and business services are now
roughly divided into three categories: real estate (L), professional,
scientific and technical activities (M) and administrative and
support service activities (N). In this chapter, the latter two
categories and part of information and communication activities
(SKD J) are referred to as business services, a definition that was
also set at the adoption of SDS.
4
A wide gap, which in 2010 increased to 3.2 p.p., is otherwise
recorded in real estate activities, but this could also be explained
by a high share of propriety housing in Slovenia, which is
characterised by relatively low and constant growth rates of
value added.