Among all European Union countries, only France and Italy’s economies have performed worse than Slovakia’s this year. The country’s GDP dropped 3.8 percent year-on-year over the first quarter of 2020, or 5.2 percent compared to the last quarter of 2019. But even the fact that someone else was worse off will give Slovak explorters little to cheer about since both countries are important trading partners for the country, points out Wood & Company’s Eva Sadovska. “Germany, which is our biggest suppliers but also biggest customers, is currently in a recession in which the economy has fallen 2 percent,” she told the daily Pravda, adding that Slovakia’s economy is built almost entirely on exports. And those fell by 20 percent in April. “It’s a steeper fall then in 2009, when industry produced less because of the economic crisis.” The Slovak National Bank has predicted a decline in GDP of 10 percent for 2020, with growth returning only in 2021. That’s even more negative than its previous prediction that growth could return in the second half of 2020 and it’s still unclear whether a second wave of coronavirus will occur. Slovakia’s unemployment rate is deteriorating just poorly from an EU standpoint as its growth figures, putting it in the same league as Portual and Sweden. Only Bulgaria and Spain fared worse, according to the most recent studies. EU-wide, employment fell by 0.1 percent, while in the Eurozone countries, it fell by 0.2 percent.
