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PERSPECTIVE
zoran Jovanovski
THE BIGGEST FAILURE OF THE
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA IN
THE PAST 25 YEARS
“I can do things that you cannot. You can do things that I cannot. Together we can make
great things”.
on September8 this year we
are celebrating the Indepen- increased unemployment and brought a
dence Day of our country,
marking 25 years of inde-
pendent republic of mace-
donia. A quarter century, a period worthy
of respect. In such circumstances, in ad-
dition to the celebratory atmosphere and
the festivity, it is usual to sum up what
has been done in the past 25 years. Let
us see what we have achieved, what were
our successes and failures as a country,
focusing on the economic sphere.
Primarily, we can be satisfied that we
survived. The independence of macedo-
nia was not a result of the many years of
a preparatory process within the federa-
tion at the time. For this reason the coun-
try became independent without foreign
currency reserves and without an elabo-
rated strategy for alternative strategy
after the initial loss of the common 20
million market. however, we succeeded.
We survived the horror of an unstable
foreign currency rate and three-digit in-
flation, the blocked southern borders and
the international sanctions to the north-
ern neighbor, one of the largest markets
for macedonian goods and services at the
time. Privatization was also performed,
as a sort of a shock therapy for loss mak-
ing enterprises which are socially owned,
14 September 2016
Mother Theresa
however also a process which resulted in
lot of pain in the societies of the coun-
tries from the previous system.
The macedonian economy and the
banking system survived the speculative
attacks on the denar and the situation
when in 2001 in the internal intereth-
nic conflict, there were shootings at a
distance of only 40 kilometers from the
capital, events which threatened to un-
dermine the trust of the domestic eco-
nomic entities and foreign investors. The
financial sector experienced a decent de-
velopment, and in the real sector there
were changes which resulted in import
of macedonian products in renowned
foreign markets. Numerous reforms
were performed, some were quite com-
plex and had a long-term range such as
the reform of the pension system.
of course, many things could have
been different. The economic growth
certainly could have been stronger. Some
risks which have serious long-term po-
tential, such as the sustainability of
public finance, the dynamics of growth
of the public debt, the quality and the ef-
ficiency of spending public money, could
have been reduced and better controlled.
What is missing is a general long-term
economic strategy for which there would