While the domestic-owned companies generated 79% of their exports in the EU market last year, the companies controlled by owners from EU countries generated 80.9% of their exports there.

Meanwhile, companies whose owners come from countries outside the EU saw 58.5% of their exports generated in the EU, a further 22% in other European countries and the rest on other continents.

Most of those exporters were Swiss-owned companies, followed by Russian- and the US-owned companies, data from the Slovenian Statistics Office show.

Of all enterprises active in non-financial activities in Slovenia in 2016, 5.9% were foreign affiliates (inward foreign affiliates, enterprises under foreign control/majority ownership).

Foreign affiliates employed 22% of the workforce employed in Slovenia and generated 31.8% of the revenue and 27.4% of the total value added.

Foreign affiliates generated 41.6% of the merchandise exports and 46.4% of the merchandise imports of the companies covered by the statistics in Slovenia.

When taking into account the operations of foreign non-residential enterprises, foreign-owned companies accounted for more than half of Slovenia's exports and imports.

Overall, Slovenia's exports of goods and services increased by 5% and imports rose by 4.2% last year.

As percentage of GDP exports represented 77.7% and imports 68.5%, which places Slovenia 10th and 11th among EU countries.