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Repeating the patterns from the past will not eliminate Slovenia's problems, IMAD director Boštjan Vasle said at the event hosted by IMAD and the Representation Office of the European Commission in Slovenia, also featuring representatives of the European Commission, the IMF, OECD and EBRD.

The conference coincides with the publication of IMAD's report "Economic Challenges 2014", with Vasle singling out two main points from the report. The first is that Slovenia needs to start solving its problems with more complex solutions, which would address several different problems.

The second point is that politics should have a long-term vision. It was believed for a long time that the crisis will not last long, and the measures taken were only short-term measures, while "it has become clear that the changes Slovenia is facing will last longer", according to Vasle.

The report also says that due to the slow economic recovery and the lack of options to raise taxes, Slovenia's fiscal policy is facing the need to continue consolidation by cutting expenditure and adjusting it to the capacity of the economy.

When it comes to general government debt, IMAD believes that its growth will be stopped by a gradual elimination of budget deficit and the creation of surplus in the medium term. The planned reduction of debt with proceeds from the privatisation of state-owned companies will meanwhile be a great challenge, the report says.

The think-tank notes that in the pre-crisis period Slovenia had a higher credit growth rate than the PIIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), with the poor conditions in the banking system also contributing to the decline in loan activity following the outset of the crisis.

International comparisons show that Slovenian companies are more indebted than companies in the economically stable countries of the EMU. At the same time, the share of equity capital in their sources of financing is extremely low, which results in excessive debt.

"Both statistics indicate the need to continue the process of deleveraging," IMAD says, noting that the Slovenian economy is still in the phase of recession, and that analysis shows that facilitated financial deleveraging in this phase affects investment activity and economic growth.

When it comes to the labour market, the main problems are a growth in long-term unemployment, segmentation of the market and a low rate of activity of older people. In order to reduce the segmentation, one of the measures should be a different regulation of student work, according to the report.