Slovenia's mostly state-owned banking sector is suffering from mounting bad debts and the government has struggled to borrow money.
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At the second half of 2010, the state-owned banking system cut back on loans to developers, and tightened loans to buy second homes.
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Even the state-owned press has warned about banking difficulties.
State-owned banks control 75% of total banking assets, a share second only to that of China (83%) among the large developing economies.
In May, the Federal Reserve Board approved plans by three state-backed Chinese banks to expand in the U.S., including the first acquisition of a U.S.retail-banking network by a state-owned Chinese lender.
In particular, they suffer from a banking system skewed in favour of state-owned enterprises, which receive more than four-fifths of all bank loans.
In 1994, China launched the "Golden Projects, " designed among other things to reform banking and financial sectors, and state-owned enterprises, and improve tax and customs enforcement.
Furthermore, extracting profits from retail banking in a country dominated by mutual and state-owned banks is tricky.
While ICBC has consistently been the most-profitable big state-owned Chinese bank in recent years, the country's entire banking sector is grappling with slowing profit growth and a potential for more bad loans.
The existence of widespread shadow banking serving the private sector, however, indicates that state-owned enterprises have much easier access to credit.
Printing money to buy debt from government-sponsored enterprises ( Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), which are now outright state-owned enterprises, is a far cry from making productive loans through a private banking system.
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To date, however, the banking system has shortchanged depositors so that it can provide inexpensive credit to state-owned enterprises.
Like much of China's banking sector, the two have struggled under the weight of bad debts made to state-owned firms.
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