Abstract

Planed investment in ten hydroelectric power plants requests 1,217 million €. At the same time, there will be a need for investment in infrastructure in roads, including main road through Zasavje region (184 million €), in railroad on Tenth Trans European transport corridor (722 million €), in electric power transmission (8 million €) and in telecommunications network (0.5 million €). Total investment will amount to be 2,131.5 million €, 57% of which will be needed for the investment in power plants, and the rest, 43%, for infrastructural investment. There are two main concepts on investment in infrastructure. Both include EU funds available for that kind of investment. The first concept is a classical budget investment in publicly owned goods while the second concept is public private partnership. In it, Slovenian state needs a partner prepared to invest and manage infrastructure who would earn annual fee of 17 to 25 millions € for consecutive 33 years. The funds needed for domestic, being state or private, investment in infrastructure connected with ten hydroelectric power plants construction should be repaid from different sources, as “shadow toll” and “the railway track use compensation”. Pure power supply part of investment in ten hydroelectric power plants will be financed by project enterprise SRESA d.o.o., owned by three partners (HSE, GEN, SEL). Taking into account the profitability of the prodject it seems reasonable to finance it partly by credits and partly by own capital. To finance the investment by own funds, STRESA would have to provide 350 million € in the period 2012 to 2030. In the same time, it should get 510 million € credits. Finally, the power plants are going to be constructed gradually and part of them will start to operate in the time of construction of the others. Taking in account expected profits and depreciation funds in operating power plants there will be 390 million € available already during the investment phase. Next to that, project is going to have direct and indirect effects on Slovenian economy, one can expect that it would increase Slovenian GDP for about 1.4 billion € (+4%). This effect is to be spread over years. There will be also 47 thousand jobs connected with the project and it will bring growth of value added in construction, business services, trade, machinery, metal industry, manufactory of electrical and optical equipment, non-metal minerals production, transport and financial intermediation. Economic activity, connected with the project, is to have strong fiscal consequences: from 0.5 to 0.6 billion € (up to 1.7% of GDP) tax gain. On the other side, the investment will negatively hit Slovenian foreign trade balance. In short term it will worsen it for 1.1 billion € due to the growth of imports of goods and services.

Key words: energy supply, investment, financing investment, infrastructure, railway transport, road connections, regional development, macroeconomics, anti recession policy

JEL: E22, G00, G3, H24, H54, L9, O18, O22, R1, R4