inostrani kapital kao faktor razvoja zemalja - Ekonomski fakultet u ...

emain two possible strategies: foreign entrepreneurship 6 importation, or public
hand application to the economy, an aspect typical to communism, i.e., using the
state as business founder and manager 7 .
But of course, things are also changing, especially after independence and a
more autonomic public life and culture, so that it is interesting to follow the
ongoing development of the situation.
With these premises in mind it is interesting to compare the four countries and spend some
words about their performance in the transition process.
After the Socialist era, the rulers of the respective countries were faced with
different tasks, in order to master the transition process: Slovakia, found itself in
first place, with the aim of substituting the factory and business management of the
communist period. Several state founded factories had been dedicated to weapon
production, for the needs of the Soviet system. The most important goal was hence
the sale off of such companies and or their premises to western business, in order to
get improved management, with the aim of shedding unemployment, which, in the
eastern areas of the country, has been and is still, at high levels. Another famous
measure with this scope in mind, is the famous flat tax rate of 19%, applied to all
kind of fiscal dragging, in order to attract investors, with the final goal of
improving the general economic situation of the country, and hence, also to create
jobs. It must be stressed out, that Slovakia can rely on a well educated work-force,
due to a pretty efficient schooling system, especially at the lower and middle level.
Slovenia instead, was already pretty harmonically developed, in comparison
to other CEE areas, having used its position between the West and the other parts
of ex-Yugoslavia in order to develop better management practices, networking
with western business, getting used to the world market environment. Therefore,
with few exceptions, it didn’t need a crash course in order to improve the situation.
The government preferred a kinder driving course of the economy, in order to
adapt to the new environment and goals. There were enough domestic companies
and entrepreneurs in not so bad a shape. Therefore, the country was not very much
interested in FDI. On the contrary, for historical and cultural reasons, there was a
certain fear that INWARD FDI would assume to “foreign conquest”. Moreover,
Slovenia had a tradition of OUTWARD FDI, oriented to the Balkan and ex-
Yugoslavia areas.
Poland was the real initiator of the big change in the world of Eastern Europe:
the role of Solidarnosc is known as the trigger of the communist system explosion,
in the direction of the free market system. In the transition process it had similar
6
This was the way followed by the Austro-Hungarian empire, itself a more than half Slavonic state.
In order to develop the port of Trieste at the end of the eighteenth century a law was issued, which
would accept foreign entrepreneurs, even if their outlaw record was not immaculate.
7
In Slovenia nowadays, almost twenty years after transition, the main domestic business
companies existing on the market are still those founded during the communist period. New
Slovenian companies are mostly only very small and scarcely important. The impression goes
that entrepreneurship is still a problem.
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