Ljubljana, 21 December (STA) - Slovenia's business sentiment indicator improved slightly in December, rising by one percentage point on the month before to 12.3 points above long-term average, but it is still 4.7 points lower year-on-year.
Releasing the figures on Friday, the Statistics Office said that business sentiment in Slovenia hit a ten-year high at the beginning of 2018.
"It hasn't been this good since 2007 when it reached its historic peak. From the beginning of 2018 until September it deteriorated quite notably, while in the last few months of this year it slightly improved."
The monthly improvement was due to higher confidence in the services industry (+1.1 p.p.), more upbeat consumers (+ 0.4 p.p.) and slightly more confident retail sector (+ 0.1 p.p.).
On the down side, confidence indicators in the manufacturing industry and in construction dropped by 0.3 percentage points.
The annual decline was driven by all five confidence indicators with the manufacturing confidence indicator falling the most, by 2.7 percentage points.
Consumer confidence indicator fell by one point, with less marked drops in the services (- 0.4 p.p.), retail (-0.4 p.p.) and construction (-0.2 p.p.).