The chairman of household appliance maker Gorenje Franjo Bobinac pointed to the important role industrial companies play in Slovenia, in terms of exports, job creation and facilitation of innovation.

However, Slovenia has no strategy and vision with respect to its industrial policy, he added.

Stojan Petrič, chief supervisor of industrial conglomerate Kolektor, argued the country should focus on a few key sectors with strong potential.

The country needs 10-15 big corporate systems with more than EUR 1bn in turnover that would boost small companies and forge ties with research institutions, Petrič proposed, stressing that all needed to be coordinated within an industrial policy.

The head of tissue maker Paloma Tadej Gosak moreover highlighted the problem of incompetent managements, mentioning Paloma's previous managers as a good example.

He feels the debate on privatisation is completely insignificant in this respect, since "it is not important who the owner is but how they treat their capital".

Meanwhile, a survey of industrial policy approaches in the past was presented by Matjaž Koman of the Ljubljana Economics Faculty, who said that Europe had responded to the crisis more slowly and less pragmatically than other parts of the world.

Slovenia for its part spent much less on support for SMEs than other EU member states after the crisis began.

It was also behind when it comes to encouraging research and development, with subsidies for R&D for instance being three times below those in Finland and very dispersed.

Finance Minister Dušan Mramor, who is also the stand-in economy minister, acknowledged that Slovenia does not have an industrial policy and said the government would forge a strategy as soon as it is done with the 2015 budget planning.

Mramor said he had a tentative concept in mind but would "not explain it since it is not sufficiently thought-through yet".