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ECONOMY
Goran Petrevski
The author is Associate Professor at
the Faculty of Economics, “Ss. Cyril and
Methodius”University
What to Do?
We spent a quarter of The title of this article is borrowed
a century, but we have from two well-known texts,
not found the recipe. the novel written by Nikolay
Why? Because we were Chernyshevsky and the political know whether I should actually raise
constantly missing pamphlet of Vladimir Ilyich
the key problem – to Lenin. The direct motivation for writing
establish a functional this article are the numerous excellent
market economy articles of few colleagues of mine, published
in the previous issues of this magazine, in
which they elaborate on various problems
Macedonian economy is facing. When
reading these articles, one cannot deny that
lack of brave entrepreneurs, low quality of
education, inequality in income distribution
etc., truly represent serious obstacles that
prevent the Macedonian economy from
reaching the long-waited acceleration. At
the same time, however, when reading
these interesting articles, I cannot get rid
ofthe feeling that they address issues of
secondary importance, whereas the main
topic somehow always slips between the
fingers.
The main point of this article is that
if you have a car the engine ofwhich has
gone dead, you will accomplish nothing if
you waste time and energy for fixing the
brakes, light, or changing the battery. Truly,
all these parts are vital for the good and
uninterrupted functioning of the car, but
that holds only if the main precondition is
met – that the engine is OK. Conversely, if
the engine is not good, then fixing of these
parts will not at all move the car from where
it stands. Bottom-line: First you have to fix
the main problem (the engine) and then to
deal with the secondary issues.
42 September 2015
So, we come to the key problem of the
Macedonian economy – simply said, the
economic “engine” does not work! I don’t
the question: What is the engine of the
economy? I am saying I don’t know whether
this question is necessary, because the
answer is very simple – that is the market.
As it usually happens, the answer to the
most difficult questions is usually very
simple. For twenty five years already we
struggle to find the recipe for acceleration
of the economic growth in Macedonia. And
we spent a quarter of a century, but we have
not found the recipe. Why? Because we
were constantly missing the key problem –
to establish a functional market economy.
As I have written in one of my previous
articles, rather than installing this
extraordinarily powerful engine (the
market), in the past two decades we
havehoped in vain that the state is the
one that canprovide bright future. In the
recent years, one may even notice that this
tendency to turn to the state interventionism
is increasing more and more, and threatens
to becomeoverwhelming. History teaches us
that prosperous are only those societies that
managed to establish market economies
(free entrepreneurship plus competition).
On the other hand, it is the same history
that taughtus (the former and current
communist countries) a big lessonabout
how societies in which the state plays the
leading role in the economyend up.
Actually, take a look at this obvious
“natural” experiment: let us compare the