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Slovenia remains the fourth worst ranked EU country, followed on the list by Greece (54), Romania (55) and Bulgaria (57). Since a 20-notch drop in 2010, Slovenia has remained at a roughly level position in the ranking.

Along with Latvia's inclusion, Peter Stanovnik of the Institute for Economic Research sees reasons for Slovenia's low ranking in the economic contraction, poor effectiveness of government measures and poor business efficiency.

The country lost as much as eight places in the economic performance category to rank 51st and one spot in the business efficiency category to land as low as 58th place in the ranking of 60 countries.

In the categories of government efficiency and infrastructure, Slovenia remained 53rd and 33rd respectively.

International trade contributed most to the drop in the economic performance category, as Slovenia lost 11 spots to 37th place.

Sonja Uršič of the Institute for Economic Research attributes this drop to the stop in growth of exports, which were the engines in the struggle for economic recovery in 2010 and 2011.

Further within the economic performance category, Slovenia's domestic economy landed at place 58 (-2), mostly on the account of the GDP drop, and international investments in the last place (-3). Inflow of funds from FDI dropped six-fold in 2012 compared to the year before, Uršič explained.

Within the government efficiency category, Slovenia gained nine places in public finances to rank 47th, since budget deficit was lowest in 2012 since the start of the crisis.

The Social framework also improved as part of government efficiency, where Slovenia now ranks 37th, which is attributed to higher equality of sexes, since the share of women in parliament was higher in 2012 than the year before.

In business efficiency, where Slovenia has always performed the worst in the IMD competitiveness ranking, the country slid five spots to 45th place in productivity and efficiency sub-category. Slovenia is estimated to stand at 80% of the EU's productivity, Mateja Drnovšek of the Ljubljana Economics Faculty explained.

Slovenia's ranking in the infrastructure category has always been relatively stable. The biggest improvement in 2012 was science infrastructure, where the country now ranks three spots higher at 32nd place.

Two thirds of the IMD scoreboard is based on hard statistical data and one third on a representative manager survey, which in Slovenia was conducted on 116 managers from micro to large companies in late February and early March, which was politically a very turbulent time for Slovenia.

Among Slovenia's attractive factors, managers underline skilled workers, a high level of education and reliable infrastructure, while the country's effectiveness of the rule of law, government competences and political stability are assessed with the lowest grades.

This year's IMD competitiveness scoreboard also saw a reshuffle at the top as the US and Switzerland overtook last year's winner Hong Kong.