Ljubljana - Five of the almost 100 companies taking part in the Festival of Solutions have been declared the most innovative companies at an event held at the Slovenian Digital Centre in Ljubljana on Wednesday. Their award is a ticket to visit the Expo in Dubai.

Optifarm was awarded for developing an IT system to manage short local food chains, and iHELP for an app allowing injured persons to contact those in their vicinity.

A solution to challenges manufacturers do not manage to address with the existing approaches and methods has been provided by Qlector, and VitalIT has come up with a solution to encourage organisations engaged in top IT practices to keep their processes simple. EpiCoro has produced a solution for easier and better user experiences.

The most innovative solutions were chosen by a jury featuring representatives of the Economy Ministry, SPIRIT agency, BTC, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Minister of Economic Development and Technology Zdravko Počivalšek took the opportunity to praise the Slovenian Digital Centre as the main hub of the Slovenian EU presidency. "This is a top hub of technological innovation and as such it is unique in the Slovenian economic area."

Providing some statistics, he said the centre had hosted more than 120 various events in four months, while recording around 1,700 in-person and 54,000 online visitors.

He said the ministry was aware of the role of digitalisation and thus supported it with a number of different incentives.

He said that as part of the national recovery and resilience plans EUR 44 million would be available to large companies to transform and boost their business systems.

"With these measures we want to enable Slovenian companies to recover faster after the Covid pandemic, to enhance resilience, increase their efficiency, productivity and competitiveness to do business and grow on the domestic and foreign markets."

Digital Centre director Katja Mohar Bastar said that "digitalisation is a way to many opportunities", adding that "it is up to each one of us whether and how to use the offered opportunities".