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What is the proportion of foreign entities that decide to register their business in Slovenia and what is the trend?

Although we do not keep information on the nationality of a founder of a business entity in the Slovenian business register (PRS), AJPES can identify the origin of the founder through their temporary or permanent address. From 2012, there has been a fall in the number of companies from outside Slovenia, from 11.2% to 7.8% in 2017, with most of the foreign founders from Italy. The number of founders from Croatia has increased from sixth place in 2012 to second from 2016. The largest decline is the number of founders from the Republic of Kosovo who generally set up companies in section G - wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, followed by M - manufacturing, F - construction, H - transportation and storage and C - Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities.

The Business Registers Interconnection System (BRIS) is being set up at the EU level as a joint effort involving all EU Member States and the European Commission, and will be operational in June. What is the involvement of AJPES in the project and what sort of data will Slovenian residents will be able to access?

AJPES manages the Slovenian Business Register, a central database containing information about all legal entities in the Republic of Slovenia and at the same time, a source of documents and particulars for BRIS. AJPES also serves as the BRIS National Service Desk.
BRIS infrastructure will facilitate access to information on all EU companies and ensure that all EU business registers communicate with each other electronically in relation to cross-border mergers and foreign branches. Citizens, businesses and national authorities will be able to search, via the e-Justice portal, for information filed by companies in the national registers.

Tourism contributes almost 13% to Slovenia's GDP and the Bank of Slovenia data shows that inflows from travel services in the first ten months of 2016 was EUR 2bn, a 3.9% growth compared to the same period in 2015. How is AJPES preparing for the reporting of tourism accommodation statistics?

The reporting of information on tourist activity requires unnecessary administrative obligations and burdens for the providers as they need to disclose the same or similar information to four different institutions. In order to simplify the reporting of this information, rationalise the work of the users of the information and provide better quality of collected data, AJPES will establish a Register of Accommodation Establishments and an information solution for unified reporting. The providers will only to need to provide the information through the AJPES web application for all mandatory reporting and legitimate information users.

How international is AJPES and how do you approach digitalisation?

The digitalisation strategy dates back 15 years to the beginning of the Agency. During this period, AJPES has established more than seven registers and numerous e-services as the basis for data collection. All annual reports are collected electronically, with more than 93% e-signed, and the web portal has become more user and mobile-device friendly. These efforts aim to promote and implement modern e-services development principles (user-centricity, digital by default, Once Only, One Stop Shop, openness & transparency, inclusiveness and accessibility, cross-border by default, etc.).
AJPES is now internationally connected with all the registries in the ex-Yugoslav states and is an important member of international registry organisations. One of the short-term goals is to become the locally operated unit in the region for global identification of each entity.