In Slovenia, there are around 600 published public procurement tenders for works and services per month, by various government departments or private companies in which the government has a threshold level of ownership. Understanding the Slovenian government’s priority development tasks is a great business tool for anticipating possible public procurement contracts for works and services. These priority development tasks are outlined in the Slovenian government development strategy up to 2020.
There are two intertwine areas of priority development tasks: the energy sector and the energy-saving renovations of government and municipal buildings. Within the framework of the new financial perspective for the period until 2020, a total of 234 million EUR was earmarked for the energy sector, divided into efficient use of energy, renewable resources of energy, and development of smart networks of government buildings. Some money under Horizon 2020 is for energy sector as well and Slovenia is working strongly to make information available to potential applications and helping them in the process. In the past, Slovenia was not so successful in drawing EU funds and lost on many investment opportunities, to benefit itself and the selected contractors.
In terms of energy-saving renovations of government and municipal buildings, the Ministry of Infrastructure is planning to renovate more than 22 million square meters of building area until 2020 which constitutes only a quarter of renovations of all the buildings. The assessed value of these works is more than 403 million EUR, amounting to around 45 million EUR per year. Planned financing model includes refundable and non-refundable EU funds.
Guidelines were published, as an aid for government and municipal departments to be able to draw from the EU funds. Energy-saving renovations of public buildings, with private capital, is a private-public partnership which is still relatively poorly developed in Slovenia. There are legal instruments enabling such projects but lack of experience and many unresolved issues, such as accounting issues, higher risks, transaction costs, means that these projects have not yet taken off. The aim of the published guidelines is to shown owners and managers of public buildings how to realise projects for energy-saving renovations that involve the drawing of EU refundable and non-refundable funds. So far, many municipalities have applied for the funds, especially to renovate schools, kindergartens, health care buildings, municipal buildings and the like.
Government departments and municipalities are already preparing for new tenders to be published in 2016, with a total of 145 million EUR available EU funds and 258 EUR millions available under favourable financing terms while the Ministry of Infrastructure is moving forward with investments for energy-saving renovations of government buildings.
Investments into the energy sector and energy-saving renovations are only one of many priority development tasks, many of which will be realised through public procurement procedures for an award of a contract for works or services. Opportunities in Slovenia are plentiful for large as well as small and medium size companies.