Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
4. Towns in Slovakia after 1993
Towns in Slovakia after 1993 the establishments of finance, management and communications that are necessary for the profitable operation of market conditions. Apart from the new logic of market economy, municipal intentions also play a role in the intended increase of the development of its own settlements. The local governments of Slovak towns and cities also seek to attract and settle companies that can create jobs and incomes. This individual intention is intertwined with the state will that controls the choice of company headquarters of national and foreign investors through the nation-wide institutional system of regional development and by laws and decrees. According to European practice, the statistical office of each country publishes regional data. This conceals the economic performance of the individual settlements, especially that of towns, although it is a wellknown fact that the major part of the products of both industries and services are provided by towns. Since the Slovak statistical office publishes combined data of the national and regional economies, it was the data of settlements provided by the Bratislava-based TREND analysis centre that enabled us to clarify the role of towns in economic competition. The drawback of its method is that this does not mean a full-range data provision, because only figures regarding certain sectors are published and data on other sectors are not provided. The TREND analysis centre lists 200 companies in 2005 that, according to their incomes, basically affect the economic life in Slovakia. On the basis of the location of their headquarters (Table 32), it can be stated that the 200 companies can be found in 69 settlements, 52 of which are towns and 17 are villages. The shift in proportions, however, cannot only be seen in settlement types, but also in the number of companies, because 90% of the listed companies can be found in towns, as can 94.8% of their income. Table 32. The 200 most important companies in the geographical space Number of settlements % Number of companies % Total income, thousand SK % Town 52 75.4 180 90.0 1,309,457,241 94.8 Village 17 24.6 20 10.0 71,360,623 5.2 1____ 69 100.0 200 100.0 1,380,817,864 100,0 Source: www.etrend.sk 112
