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Jahnatek: I Believe We'll Manage to Stabilise Employment in 2010
Sunday 03 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 3 (TASR) - Economy Minister Lubomir Jahnatek (Smer-SD) has told TASR in an interview that he believes that Slovakia will manage to stabilise the (un)employment situation.
"Macroeconomic experience says that if the national economy doesn't begin to rise by 4 percent of GDP, the decline in jobs will continue," said the minister.
"We expect that if the national economies in the EU stabilise and begin to rise, the (negative) trend in unemployment will halt. It's difficult to say, however, whether we'll manage to halt the trend in unemployment, or at least to mitigate it; or whether it will continue for another two years at least," said Jahnatek.
The economy minister said that in his personal opinion, new jobs should begin to emerge again throughout Europe in 2013. "As for the Slovak entrepreneurial environment, we've focused on inviting new investors to Slovakia in order to be able to create new jobs at least by way of foreign private capital," said Jahnatek.
He went on to say that the global crisis is going through three phases. "At first, it was the financial crisis and a following loss of investors' trust in financial institutions. This loss of trust resulted in a drop in investments and withdrawal of money from financial institutions, thereby new values ceased to be created," said the minister.
This distrust in financial institutions resulted in the economic crisis, as money was withdrawn from the market, which meant a drop in consumption. "This followed a decrease in production, and the phenomenon of unemployment emerged. Unfortunately, the loss of trust in financial institutions and the decrease in consumption resulted in a social crisis," he said.
The third phase of the crisis, which is currently emerging represents a menace to all governments, in the EU in particular. According to Jahnatek, the Union as a whole has been endangered, as 60 percent of its production is destined for export to non-EU countries. If the consumption doesn't improve in the countries that buy the goods from the EU, it will have a negative effect on employment in Europe, he added.
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