Krizanic, who spoke on the sidelines of the meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington, added that Slovenia was part of the European financial market, which made it unlikely that its markets would stray of course if Europe remained stable.

However, he said the rating cut was mostly a consequence of the reduced loan activity of banks in Slovenia, which must be overcome.

Capital injections to state-owned banks launched in the spring, which are due to be followed by another one to Slovenia's biggest bank, NLB, in the first months of 2012 should suffice, Krizanic said, adding that companies can also find loans abroad.

In order to avoid the Greek scenario from unfolding in Slovenia, he said that Slovenia should prove it is able to control its spending in the long term.

He added that financial markets got the impression with the rejection of the pension reform in a referendum in June that Slovenia was not capable of economising.

The outgoing minister hopes that the next government - which will succeed the Borut Pahor cabinet after it lost a confidence vote on Tuesday - will have enough determination to get the budget deficit below 3% of GDP by 2013 and abolish the structural long-term deficit that came about with excessively optimistic tax reforms in 2005 and 2007.

Even if the situation is kept under control in short-term through capital market measures, Slovenia will have a serious problem if its fails to implement pension reform in the long run, said Krizanic.

The opposition Democrats (SDS), which headed the government in the 2004-2008 term, responded to the minister's statement on Sunday, stressing that Slovenia achieved a budget surplus in 2007 for the first time based on the criticised tax reform.

According to the SDS, the reason for Slovenia's poor financial state is unbridled spending of the outgoing government, which is evident from public debt data.

In the 2004-2008 term, the country's public debt grew only EUR 0.9bn to EUR 8.2bn, while it subsequently doubled to EUR 16.4bn by the first quarter of 2011.

Regarding the planned second capital injection to NLB, the outgoing minister explained that intensive talks were carried out as part of the search for private investors who would take part and that interest was high, although the price could prove a decisive issue.

NLB supervisors backed a EUR 400m injection ten days ago, while the initial plan was for another EUR 250m hike after the one that was carried out in March.

On the margins of the IMF and World Bank events, Krizanic held bilateral meetings with IMF Executive Director Willy Kiekens, World Bank Executive Director Konstantin Huber, Head of IMF mission to Slovenia Antonio Spilimberg and International Finance Corporation (IFC) Vice President Janamitra Devan.