The paper notes that many eastern European economies, in particular the Czech Republic, have been growing faster than Slovenia over the past ten years.

But even in a period of very rapid growth in the last four years, Slovenia grew at a slower pace than Ireland, Romania, Malta, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Estonia and even Croatia.

It does not make sense to agonise over the fact that Czechs are overtaking us in their BMWs or that they have more millionaires.

After all, Slovenia has huge benefits from the Czechs, Poles and Slovaks being wealthy; it sold EUR 1.5bn worth of goods to these three countries in 2008, by last year the figure grew to EUR 2bn.

But the bitter fact is that Slovenia is not fully leveraging the current economic cycle. The future government should keep this in mind, the paper notes.

The growth rates recorded in recent years may make it look like the economy is competitive enough, but this is not the case.

"If they need an example, they may as well look to the Czech Republic. If they manage to fill the budget with a 15% flat tax rate, perhaps Slovenia could do it as well."