Releasing the latest figures on Friday, the Statistics Office said that the annual values of goods exports and imports last year were the highest on record.

Unlike in the past when Slovenia continuously posted a surplus in external trade, this time its exports represented 98.3% of its imports. A gap was recorded in trade with EU countries as well as the rest of the world.

The country exported EUR 24.66 billion worth of goods to the 28 EU countries, including the UK, or 3.6% more than in 2018, while imports from the bloc rose by 3.3% to EUR 24.83 billion.

EU markets accounted for 73.7% of Slovenia's exports, up from 77.1% in 2018, and 73% of imports, down from 78.3%.

Exports to non-EU markets soared by 24.9% to EUR 8.81 billion and imports from there surged by 38.3% to EUR 9.21 billion.

As much as 18.9% of Slovenia's exports last year were to Germany, followed by Italy (11.6%), Croatia (8.6%), Austria (6.8%) and Switzerland (6.7%).

Slovenia also imported most goods from these countries, 16.1% from Germany, 14% from Italy, 10% from Austria, 8.6% from Switzerland and 5% from Croatia.

Major groups of exports were road vehicles, medicinal and pharmaceutical products, and electrical machinery, apparatuses and appliances.

Similarly, road vehicles, medicinal and pharmaceutical products, and petroleum and petroleum products were the main groups of imports.

"The largest share in Slovenia's trade in goods last year was represented by transactions involving actual or intended transfer of ownership, which represented as much as 91.8% of trade in goods at exports and 89.3% of trade in goods at imports," said the Statistics Office.

In December 2019 alone, exports amounted to EUR 2.35 billion, up 4.1% year-on-year, and imports to EUR 2.71 billion, up 11.2%, which created the highest trade gap last year, at EUR 351 million.

Exports to EU member states rose by 1% to EUR 1.66 billion and imports increased by 0.6% to EUR 1.84 billion.

Exports to EU non-member countries rose by 12.6% to EUR 0.69 billion and imports grew by 43.7% to EUR 0.87 billion.

The government macroeconomic think tank IMAD has calculated that export grew by 2.2 percentage points to 9% in real terms and import by 3 percentage points to 11.5%.

It said however that the growth was strongly affected by retail and distribution of medicinal and pharmaceutical products via Switzerland, as the Swiss-based Novartis has recently launched a logistics and distribution centre for SE Europe.

IMAD has detected that growth has slowed down in trade with Germany, Italy and France, whereas trade with Austria has decreased. Meanwhile, trade with Croatia, Russia and Serbia has increased.