July 15 (SeeNews) - The European Commission has improved its economic growth forecast for Slovenia in 2022 to 5.4% from 3.7% predicted in May, it said.
Slovenia's economy is seen to expand 1.0% in 2023, the Commission said in its Summer 2022 Economic Forecast report on Thursday.
"The impact of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, increasing consumer prices and production costs, tighter financial conditions, lower expected demand in foreign markets and disruptions in supply chains are only slowly impacting incoming data, with the exception of consumer confidence, which has decreased significantly. These factors are set to gradually weigh on growth in the second half of 2022 and in 2023," the Commission said.
Consumption growth will slow down on the back of persistent inflation and lower real wages during the rest of the year and in 2023, while investment growth is also forecast to decelerate in the second half of the year due to the increasing uncertainty, lower expected foreign demand, higher financing costs and prices of investment goods and construction materials, the EC noted.
"Inflation is projected to reach 7.6 % in 2022. Under the assumption of declining energy and food prices, inflation is expected to decrease to 4.9% in 2023," the EU's executive body said.
Slovenia's economy grew by 8.1% last year after shrinking 4.2% in 2020.