Best Bitcoin Exchange for Slovenia

Although Slovenia is one of the smallest countries in the EU, the country seems to want to play at the top of the blockchain and crypto worlds.

Slovenia wants to found a Bitcoin City

Slovenia lies geographically between Italy and Croatia and is actually a small nation, but with Bitcoin City outside the capital Ljubjana, it wants to be at the forefront of the crypto world.

The whole thing is to be created in a former shopping centre that extends over 475,000 square metres and has over 500 individual shops. The complex called “BTC-City” was also visited by Prime Minister Miro Cerar and received a considerable boost. During the visit, he paid for his coffee using a crypto currency gateway. Lyubyana has always been a leader in Internet and communications technology and has a variety of start-ups and other innovative projects that make it one of the top technology cities in Europe. This new complex is also likely to contribute to the spread of crypto currencies.

BTC-City is the result of a Fintech start-up called Eligma, which has created an innovative point-of-sale system to turn this shopping centre into a true BTC city. Eligma announced that the complex is a business and shopping ecosystem based on the latest technological solutions, including blockchain and artificial intelligence and crypto currencies.

Eligma described the Prime Minister’s purpose in opening the Beyond 4.0 international conference dedicated to digital society and blockchain. The purpose of the conference was also to present the strategy to become a Bitcoin city through BTC.

Eligma offers its own wallet called Elipay, with which the first successful payment was made in April and in which Bitcoin Cash and its own token will also be added as a means of payment.

Economy

The country has a mixed economy that is relatively balanced between agriculture, industry, services and tourism. Notable employers include the oil and energy company Petrol, the household goods manufacturer Gorenje, the pharmaceutical company Krka, the motorhome manufacturer Adria Mobil and the Revoz car plant in Novo Mesto, a subsidiary of Renault. The per capita income of the Slovenes is in the middle of the European field. In comparison with the GDP of the EU, expressed in purchasing power standards, Slovenia reached an index value of 83 (EU-28:100) in 2016, which is about 67% of the German value.

GDP per capita in 2013 was $23,289. This put Slovenia ahead of Portugal and well ahead of all other Central Eastern European EU countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia. Foreign debt amounted to around 9.8 billion euros in 2014. Economic growth was 2.9 % in 2015, with almost 2 % growth expected for 2016. Average growth in the years 1997 to 2014 was 2.53 %. The country’s GDP amounted to 38.543 billion euros in 2015, gross domestic product per capita 18,680 euros. In the Global Competitiveness Index, which measures a country’s competitiveness, Slovenia ranks 48 out of 137 countries (as of 2017-2018). In the Index for Economic Freedom, Slovenia ranks 97 out of 180 countries in 2017.

The inflation rate was relatively high until 2003 (2001: 8.4%, 2002: 7.5%) and only fell to around 2% in 2005. Due to the financial crisis from 2007 onwards, Slovenia has to contend with increased unemployment, which stood at 11.1% (May 2016), and a low inflation rate of 0.2% (July 2016) In May 2018, unemployment had fallen to 5.6%.

Farming

Slovenia’s independence heralded a phase of “market consolidation” in the country’s agriculture. The number of farms decreased rapidly, a development that slowed down only in the early 2000s. In 2005, the total agricultural area was 648,113 ha and the total number of farms 77,000, of which 85% had less than ten hectares of agricultural area. The total value of agricultural output in 2005 was 959 million euro, which at that time was slightly less than 2% of the country’s GDP. The Slovenian government is concerned about the age structure of farmers: only 18.8% of them are younger than 45 years and 56.9% are older than 55 years.

An important branch of Slovenian agriculture is animal husbandry. It accounts for more than 50 percent of production output (2005: 511 million euros). The proportion of meadow and pasture land and fodder cultivation areas is correspondingly high, at 60 percent and 20 percent respectively of Slovenia’s agricultural area. Despite a slight decline since the mid-1990s, the livestock of cattle and pigs accounts for the largest share of livestock breeding (452,517 cattle and 547,432 pigs in 2005). The number of goats, sheep (together) and horses has roughly doubled since 1997, but remains well behind at 154,832 and 19,249 respectively.

Slovenia’s food and beverage industry has had to cope with two major crises in the last 20 years: The first was the collapse of sales markets in the former Yugoslavia since the beginning of the 1990s and, from 2004, the strong competition from major European groups following the country’s accession to the EU. EU accession was advantageous for the less-favoured agricultural areas (within the meaning of Council Directive 75/268/EEC of 28 April 1975 on mountain and hill farming and farming in certain less-favoured areas). For these difficult to access and often low yielding areas, of which Slovenia owns 440,349 ha, the EU provides for support measures to prevent the abandonment of agriculture in these areas. The forestry sector is said to have significant economic growth potential. 59.8 percent of Slovenia’s surface area is covered with forest, which is only surpassed by Sweden and Finland in a European comparison. Spruce (32 percent) and beech (31 percent) dominate the predominantly mixed forests. Despite the large size of the Slovenian forests, forestry accounts for only 0.2 percent of the country’s GDP.

Wine-growing accounts for a relatively high proportion of agricultural land. Some 40,000 private and professional winegrowers often cultivate their vines in the fifth or sixth generation. Improved know-how and the selection of the grapes led to a quality gain in the broad mass of wines offered. The quantities from the Habsburg and pre-Communist periods were reached again.

Industry

About 40 percent of the working population work in industry. At over 20 percent, the automotive industry accounts for the largest share of Slovenia’s exports. In addition to this, the electrical and electronics industry (around 10 percent), metal processing and mechanical engineering (10 percent) and the chemical and pharmaceutical industries (9 percent) are of the greatest importance. A growing branch of industry is provided by the automotive industry (and automotive supply industry in the broadest sense), partly due to the Renault plant. Industry accounts for a total of 27 percent of GDP. Slovenia is also home to Pipistrel, an aircraft manufacturer for ultralight aircraft.

Services

Since independence in 1991, Slovenia has significantly expanded its service sector, which now accounts for 53 per cent of jobs in the country. Slovenia already has a well-developed transport system for Central Europe. In addition to the cultural and economic centres in Ljubljana, the capital with its own international airport, and Maribor, the Julian Alps, the Postojna Caves and the Adriatic Sea coast are the main tourist destinations with the necessary infrastructure. For some years now, health tourism has also been gaining in importance in the northeast of the spa country. More than 1.9 million tourists came to Slovenia in the first half of 2017.

With the seaport Koper (Italian Capodistria) Slovenia has overseas trade connections all over the world and is a transit country for goods to Central Europe.

State budget

In 2016, the state budget comprised expenditures of the equivalent of 20.51 billion US dollars, compared with revenues of the equivalent of 19.32 billion US dollars. This results in a budget deficit of 2.7 percent of gross domestic product. Government debt in 2016 amounted to 34.7 billion US dollars or 78.9 percent of GDP. Standard & Poor’s has rated the country’s government bonds A+ (as of November 2018).

The share of government expenditure (in % of GDP) in the following areas:

• Health: 9.1 percent (2009)
• Education: 5.2 percent (2007)
• Military: 1.0 percent (2014)