Let's make a small publicity to my home country - Slovakia.
Since the beginning of this year SKK (Slovak crowns - local currency) is gone and Slovakia has ââ¬. There are a lot of opinions if it's better to keep local currency or not. Mostly people say that everything will be more expensive. If we look back the goods and real estates were getting more and more expensive every year anyway. For sure it will be convenient for people traveling to Slovakia and it will be more than good for business and investors.
â⬠with the 19% constant tax rate can be quite attractive. Ratings for Slovakia are going up these days. That's especially nice in today's financial markets crisis.
Besides Peugeot-Citroen, Kia and VW manufacturing cars, there is Dell, HP, IBM with quite a lot of employees too. Dell ~1400, HP ~600, IBM ~2300. For a country with 5 millions inhabitants it's quite a lot.
As andy.sh showed in his blog entry the salaries around the world are globalizing. But still those companies found lot of skilled people for a good price in Slovakia.
I wish all the best for the upcoming year to my country!
Since moving to Slovakia 6-7 months ago, it's far exceeded my expectations and hopes! I really wasn't sure what to expect, other than to live in a city that had a pretty center, and to be well located in the center of Europe (good for getting to lots of Perl conferences
Since then, I've found it a great place to live and work from, with lots of nice people too. So, I hope to stay here for 2009! And join you too in wishing Slovakia the best for 2009.
Jonathan
Yet another expat view
potyl on 2009-01-06T18:01:55
I joined Slovakia 4 years ago. In this 4 years things have changed a lot, at least in Bratislava. There has been a big real state boom, lots of constructions everywhere: offices, buildings, shopping mall expansions and even bridges.
The world (or the US) might be in a financial crisis but here we don't notice it too much. I do since I work for an American company that's panicking!
Now the country has changed it's currency to the euro. So far I haven't seen too many changes on the prices. In fact, some shops are still advertising prices in crowns. These days are rather confusing because people tend to be caring still crowns and Euros since both are still accepted.
The 19% fixed tax rate is quite a nice "feature" as it greatly enhances our purchasing power while keeping a low cost for the employer.
Slovensko!
