The growth of exports is attributed mostly to a 7.5% growth of sales on the EU markets to EUR 25bn. Exports to non-EU markets amounted to EUR 7bn, 0.3% more than in 2015.

Bisnode stressed that the importance of export markets was related to the size of companies, as large companies generate a significantly higher share of their sales on foreign markets (EUR 19bn or 47% last year) than small companies (EUR 4.4bn or 22%).

"Small companies meanwhile managed, starting from a lower basis, to increase sales revenues on foreign markets the most, by as much as 27%."

By far the strongest export industry in terms of sales revenue was manufacturing, which generated almost EUR 18bn in sales revenue or 55% of total exports. Compared to 2015, exports generated by manufacturing were up by 5.1% last year.

According to the Bisnode analysis, total revenue generated by Slovenian companies last year was up by 4.5% to EUR 90bn, while net profit was up by 63% to EUR 3.5bn.

On the Slovenian market, the financial and insurance industry recorded the biggest increase in revenue, by 131%. It meanwhile recorded the biggest drop in revenue on foreign markets, by 22%.

After years of decline ever since the 2008 financial and economic crisis, the assets of Slovenian companies were up by 4% to EUR 94bn. Both short-term and long term assets were up, by 3% and 6.3%, respectively.

Total capital of Slovenian companies was up by 7.1% to EUR 44.5bn.

The changes in the amount of assets and capital have resulted in an even more stable structure of financing sources, with the share of capital increasing by 2.5 percentage points to 47%.

We can thus establish that both long-term and short-term liquidity of operations improved in 2016, Bisnode said.