IBM may expand its investments in Slovakia outside Bratislava

IBM may expand its investments in Slovakia outside Bratislava

The IBM company is welcome to invest in central or eastern Slovakia, the Minister Construction and Economy, Juraj Miškov, said on August 26 after meeting representatives of IBM Slovensko who told him that Slovakia was one of the five possible countries for a IBM investment in central Europe, the SITA newswire reported.
IBM representatives did not elaborate on their intentions at the meeting, SITA wrote. If the investment comes to Slovakia 200 jobs would be created next year and a total of 3,000 could develop over the next three years, the daily newspaper Hospodárske noviny wrote. IBM representatives are considering the towns of Žilina and Košice as well as other localities according to the newspaper.

IBM is one of the world's largest IT companies, currently employing almost 400,000 people world-wide. IBM has been active in Slovakia since 1990.

5% GDP - 2nd quarter of 2010 - Slovakia’s economy has best GDP growth among all countries in the European Union

In the second quarter of 2010 Slovakia’s economy is posted the best GDP growth among all countries in the European Union.


The growth is spiking but it is not yet the stellar numbers achieved in the past given the international situation. Still Slovak growth looks set to remain strong for the rest of the year. Germany energising economy is a very big trade partner for Slovak business, and it certainly helped to generate the nearly 5-percent pro rata jump in Slovakia’s GDP.


In the second quarter, the country’s GDP grew by 4.6 percent year-on-year, following just slightly stronger growth of 4.8 percent in the first quarter, according to a flash estimate released by Slovakia’s Statistics Office on August 13. Total GDP in the second quarter reached €16.340 billion.


“The ongoing strength of the growth in the second quarter real GDP in Slovakia was, overall, more of a positive surprise,” Vladimír Vaňo, chief analyst with Volksbank.

In the first half of 2010, Slovak exports increased on average by 20.7 percent year-on-year, accounting for a similarly stellar recovery in Slovakia’s annual industrial production by an average of 22 percent in the first six months, Vaňo noted.

“Compared with expectations of other market watchers of around 4 percent year-on-year and our estimate of 4.3 percent, the year-on-year growth of GDP was faster than expected,” Martin Lenko, senior analyst with VÚB Banka, said.


Though the detailed structure of the growth in Slovakia’s GDP is not fully known yet, Lenko said that household consumption in Slovakia probably recorded only a moderate increase in the second quarter, similar to its performance in the first quarter, due to the country’s still high unemployment rate (mostly in the east of the country) which is falling only very slowly.

“Slovak quarterly expansion of 1.2 percent quarter-on-quarter runs ahead of results of similarly open economies of the Czech Republic or Hungary,” Vaňo said. “However, the overall eurozone economy, a destination for roughly half of Slovak exports, recorded a quarterly real growth of 1.0 percent in the second quarter. In other words, recovery of the export markets alone does not suffice in explaining the resilience of the Slovak economy.”


According to Vaňo, gauging from these comparisons as well as from the strength of the recovery in industrial production in the first half-year together point to Slovakia continuing to reap the benefits of euro introduction via a more resilient economic recovery. He believes this is explained by a competitive edge brought to Slovak exporters by the euro through lower interest rates but more importantly because of exchange rate stability and significant savings in the administrative costs of foreign trade.


“The faster than expected growth of GDP in Slovakia, and also in Germany, in the first half of the year is forcing us to revise the estimate of annual growth of GDP in 2010,” Lenko said. “We estimate that growth in real GDP will reach an average of 4.2 percent year-on-year in 2010 as opposed to our original estimate of 3 percent.”

The rosier growth numbers for Slovakia’s GDP have not yet been reflected in significant job growth in the country’s labour market.

The new train station of Bratislava - Hlavna Stanica as it will be in about 2-3 years

In a previous report, (you might want to open it to have some background) we discussed the long overdue reconstruction of the Bratislava main train station that links Bratislava to Vienna.

The newly released pictures we are showing here show how the station will look. The area will be transformed from this drab communist vision of the 1980es:

Back to its original facade from 1905

The current reconstruction of the station hall will remove the 1980es exterior to reveal the historical facade of the station. This historical building will reconstructed to the original design by the architect F. Pfaff from the year 1905.

The building was originally

Opened	1848
Rebuilt	1988
Formerly known as	Pressburger Hauptbahnhof

Some original pictures for your enjoyment

Romanian gypsies in France raised again the usual talk of integration

Romanian gypsies in France raised again the usual talk of integration. But it has been tried!

here is an interesting passage on roma integration

"The communists tried to integrate the Roma, and the communists were masters at social engineering.

For example, when the germans left Transylvania in 70’s and 80’s, they left behind deserted villages. The regime decided to move poor homeless roma in the empty german houses and villages, a decision in tone with the regime’s claim to offer everyone equal chances. The move didn’t work very well, the new roma tenants being unable to assure the maintenance to their new homes, and the proper look of this villages turned to derelict.
Before this, the regime tried something else. After 1945, the communists evicted and deported the rich, the former elite on the ground of being vicious capitalists . Those rich people were living mainly in the centre of the towns, obviously. In the empty houses, the regime brought again the poor, mainly roma, in an attempt to make the communist rule more palatable to the masses and ingratiate themselves with the poor. So, for decades, many roma occupied the former’s elite central houses.

Also, the regime didn’t aknowledge such notions as „gens de voyage”. If you were seen wandering the streets, a Militia officer would come and start questioning, „comrade, why are you on the street at this time of day? You don’t work? Then come along comrade to the section, we will find an appropiate working place for you”. "

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496,00.html

Slovak economy is revving up - the Return of the Tatra Tiger

According to the Financial times:

notes/corrrections:

There are some persistent misconceptions about Slovakia and Czech republic that need to be addressed:

The region these countries inhabit is central europe, not eastern europe, this is correctly recognised by the german press. The term Mitteleuropa existed before world war 2, and describes the bulk of the former austrohungarian empire, and today the countries: Germany, Poland, Czech republic, Slovakia, tiny Slovenia, and parts of Croatia, Austria, and Switzerland. The term eastern europe is applied wrongly to any country that was conquered by Stalin's Soviet union (including most of Austria) after the war. This level of ignorance about geography by some editors in the anglosaxon press is worrying, they tend to confuse the historical term "eastern block" with the geographical term eastern europe. It makes one sound fairly uneducated to confuse the two, especially given that Moscow is geographically in europe...

Slovakia's former centre-left government kept the vast bulk of the economic reforms that have made Slovakia such a success. The problem was not economic policy, but a very corrupt parties being included in the former coalition (the nationalists) and Vladimir Meciar's HZDS which is now facing oblivion. I believe that the nationalistic leanings of Robert Fico, the former PM, and his burning ambition to be PM lef him to a bad choice of partners.

Slovakia is a very open economy, and a very small country (5 million) but you know, small is beautiful :) , both of which mean that its economy is affected alot by the gyrations of the global economy, big highs and big lows. This is less true of Poland for example because it is a huge country. As a result the former tiny-bit-left-off-centre government threw in the kitchen sink to stabilise the economy when the big gyrations of last year where affecting stability disproportionally. That was a good idea given that growth was bound to come back to more normal levels as it has. This was not mismanagement. Generally the economic consensus of Slovakia is far to the "right" of those in Austria for example...

the rest of the article about the likely positive future of Slovakia into a path of convergence and prosperity is fairly accurate. Although the recently aired idea of stepping onto the accelerator maniacally to become a Singapore of europe is overdone. Singapore is a city state and really is the place rich asians stash their wealth legal or laundered... If the giant chinese economy next door didn't exist, neither would Singapore... Its a parasitic state and not many of them are sustainable or desired in this world.. The world does not need more places where one can launder drug-money...

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2010/07/09/return-of-the-tatra-tiger/#more-58946


"Slovakia is reclaiming the new tiger among central and eastern European markets after a boom in industrial output and car manufacturing boosted its economy.

Industrial output rose by 30 per cent on year-on-year basis, with the chemical industry rising by 50 per cent and the carmaking sector gaining 63.7 per cent. Electronics production did even better, rising by 85.3 per cent in May, mainly thanks to Sony and Samsung factories based in the country.

The Slovak economy, dependent mainly on exports, was once already called the “Tatra Tiger” after its GDP rose over 10 per cent in 2007 and outperformed its regional rivals.

Yet the economic crisis hit the country hard and joining the euro in 2009 also had costs. Unemployment rose as Slovak workers suddenly became more expensive than those from Poland and Hungary.
The government of the day intervened to ease the The budget deficit was as high as 6.8 per cent of GDP.

But now Slovakia has a chance to regain that promising status and attract more investors. The economy grew by 4.8 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter - the fastest growth among all EU members. GDP was $115.3bn in 2009 and is expected to rise by 3.2 per cent this year.

Slovakia is now ahead with important economic reforms, which are expected to contribute to the recovery and further economic growth.

The country’s new centre-right government, led by Iveta Radicova, was appointed on Friday. Its first task will be a decision on the €750bn European safety net designed to help debt-strapped countries."