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INTERVIEW

aspora to come to this country in order
to build bridges of cooperation with the
world markets.

In June 2016 you organized the Fo-
rum for Investors from the diaspora.
What experiences did these investors
share?

(photo: Economy and business) B. M. Stamenova: During the events
for promotion of Macedonia before the
Agency and member of the board of Robert Kennedy Founda- diaspora which we organized in Toron-
tion, representatives of Hitachi, Epson, etc. to, New York, Chicago, Columbus, Paris,
Vienna, we met expatriates who are in-
Guruduth Banavar is the speaker that causes the most an- terested to invest, however they needed
ticipation – he leads the world team of scientists who are work- more information about this country.
ing on the most famous system of artificial intelligence Watson. We continuously held numerous bilat-
Within the IBM corporation, the Research Center Thomas J. eral meetings with the existing and the
Watrson builds the foundations for connection between peo- potential investors who shared the ad-
ple and machines. The guru this year was the speaker of Nobel vantages and the problems in the real-
Week Dialogue, and in October we will listen to him in Skopje. ization of the investment. For this rea-
son we decided to make a forum where
How can the interested persons register for the Conference objectively we will indicate the obstacles
and what are the requirements? that the investors from the diaspora will
face, and we will promote successful in-
B. M. Stamenova: The details about the event are published vestments in different industries.
on www.Macedonia2025.com/summit. The registration price
of 250 Euros is a symbolic one considering the opportunity to In a lack of official records about
listen to these top speakers in one place. We have numerous these investors, through our sources
benefits for early registration, for several representatives from we received information about approxi-
a single company, for micro and startup companies. The regis- mately sixty people with whom we con-
tration is open, and we invite everyone to register. ducted a research. Most of them come
from Europe, and a smaller part come
Macedonia2025 organized the program Summer Business from America and Australia. Most of
Practice for the professionals from the diaspora. What kind of them have higher education, and they
program is this? invested in IT, BPO, tourism, healthy
food, renewable energy sources and sev-
B. M. Stamenova: Macedonia2025 aims to connect the pro- eral major production capacities. Ninety
fessional diaspora with the Macedonian companies. With this percent are small and medium-sized
program we provided young successful Macedonians from the companies with up to 50 employees who
diaspora to come to this country and to become familiar with are export oriented, and they place the
the business climate. They were extremely satisfied with the products on the markets where the in-
practices they realized in the Macedonian companies and with vestor comes from, mostly Europe. They
the opportunity to create new friendships which we hope will were attracted by the low costs for run-
grow into business cooperation in the future. Next year we ex- ning a business, the taxes, the employ-
pect an increasing number of young professionals from the di- ment benefits, the location, the quality
of the employees and due to patriotic
reasons. As greatest challenges they in-
dicated the availability of trained work-
force, the administrative barriers and
the non-professional officials, legal and
political factors, the lack of infrastruc-
ture, and the undeveloped business cul-
ture.

82 September 2016