Slow growth and rising inequality have reached a tipping point in many of the world’s advanced economies. The World Economic Forum’s Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2017lays out strategies for cutting the current vicious cycle of stagnation and polarisation of income and opportunities.
1 January 2017 marked the 10th anniversary of Slovenia adopting the euro and 15 years since the adoption of euro banknotes and coins.
Slovenia’s economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.7% in the second quarter of the year, while working days and seasonally adjusted growth was 1.9%, show the first estimates from the Statistics Office. The overall added value of the Slovenian economy was up by 2.9%.
Slovenia’s merchandise exports rose 4.5% year-on-year in the January-June period, with imports expanding by 1.8% in the same period, the Statistics Office said in a preliminary release on Tuesday.
The amount of office space in Luxembourg reached a record high during the first half of 2016. Within six months, the amount of new offices occupied reached nearly 122,000 m², with Kirchberg seeing the most movement with 32 percent of new occupations of offices.
Slovenia has placed 20th in the latest Social Progress Index (SPI) rankings among the 133 participating countries, which puts it in the first place among the Central and Southeast European countries. In the basic human needs category Slovenia placed 15th(with a score of 93.75), while it placed 23rd in the foundations of well-being category (83.13) and 20th in the opportunity category (75.92).
Official statistics show that the registered unemployment rate fell for the third consecutive month in April. The index stopped at 11.5% which is 0.5 percentage points down from March and a point less than a year ago. The rate fell across all statistical regions whereas male joblessness was down 0.6 pp to 10.5% in April over March, and female unemployment edged down 0.3 pp to 12.7%.
With a per capita purchasing power of more than 30,000 euros per year, Luxembourg is home to 540,000 of the EU’s wealthiest citizens. Even the difference to its neighbor Belgium is striking, according to the latest purchasing power figures for Europe prepared by RegioData. A Luxembourger living in the capital currently has an average per capita purchasing power of 36,000 euros per year. Only 1.5 hours away is the Belgian city of Liege, whose purchasing power is more than 40% lower.
Luxembourg leads the globalization ranking with a score of 0.97. Credit Suisse has published another “Success of Small Countries Report.” In the report, they found that small developed states and separate customs territories were economically more successful that their larger peers and that, importantly, they tended to be more globalized. Small states have clearly become the lead indicators of new trends in the world economy.
Luxembourg ICT sector is driving workforce growth. People working in the ICT sector were the biggest beneficiaries of the job growth with employment numbers rising 5.7 percent over a year. In services, they rose 4.4 percent and they grew 2 percent in the finance and insurance sectors. In the latter category, the fastest expanding sectors were funds and pensions.