he attendants of the conference organised by the Wood and Furniture Association at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GZS) listed a number of reasons for the decline of the sector over the last couple of decades.

The sector employed 37,000 people 25 years ago (45,000 the forestry sector included), but the number shrunk to 20,000 workers by the start of the global economic crisis and to 14,000 by 2010.

According to Bernard Likar of the organising association, too little money and energy is invested in development and competitiveness, while companies have also been overtaxed for the last 20 years and are not connected enough to the university.

The legislation is rigid and unfriendly in terms of competitiveness, and the horizontal system of phasing public funds puts sectors with low added value per employee in an unequal position, he listed.

Slovenia is unable to find a balance between competitiveness and social sustainability, the forestry-wood chain is not tight enough, and wood and the wood-processing industry have been losing in esteem over the last decades, Likar added.

Anica Zavrl Bogataj of the interministerial working group Forest-Wood, which was formed at the beginning of the year to analyse the situation in the sector, said the working group was just about to finish an action programme and pass a programme of measures.

Miha Humar of the Ljubljana Biotechnical Faculty presented the project for finding options to restructure the Slovenian industry, run in cooperation with the working group.

According to Humar, the general economic environment needs to be improved and an active state policy for wood is needed, while the production chain should also be optimised.

Wood should be recognised as a material of national importance and the wood-processing industry as a sector of strategic value, he added.