In line with its strategic commitment, the Economic Chamber of North Macedonia continues to promote activities aimed at supporting the export capacity and competitiveness of Macedonian companies, caried out under the Private Sector Regional Integration Support Activity in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a project that will extend for three years, by late June 2025.
To that end, the Economic Chamber of North Macedonia presented the project opportunities today in Strumica to businesspeople from the South-East region.
According to the acting Operations Director for Development, Innovation, and Knowledge at the Chamber, Mihajlo Donev, M.Sc., the focus is on the two primary objectives of the project:
- achieving improvements in the regional and international business cooperation between Macedonian companies and the Western Balkan and European Union markets, and
- increasing the competitiveness of export-oriented companies and integrating them into regional and global value chains.
In year one (by June 2023), the project will deliver a Study mapping the regional commercial and investment potential, as well as an Analysis of the export potentials that will be the starting point to undertake other activities such as conferences on doing business with the EU and the Western Balkans, B2B-meetings, buying missions, development of digital export platform – Easy Export, and development of an Export Institute.
Chamber representatives also announced five calls to support export-oriented companies while building their exporting capacity, expected to be issued in the course of this week. The calls involve direct assistance to companies in terms of developing market export strategies/plans, digital transformation, implementation of international quality standards and circular economy, technical assistance in access to finance, about which selected companies will be aided by consultants who are experts in the field.
Prof. Dr. Darko Lazarov, leading expert in developing the export performance analysis and in identifying export potentials of the Macedonian economy, presented part of the produced results at the event. He pointed out that the South-East region is significant to the Macedonian exports despite it accounts for 6-7% (roughly €450-500 million) of the total national export. The region largely exports primary agricultural goods (roughly 16-17%), food and beverages (roughly 15-16%), metal and metal products (roughly 14-15%), wood products and furniture (roughly 14%), clothing (roughly 14%), and rubber and plastic products (roughly 6-7%). To illustrate, the relative share of the export of primary agricultural and food products from the region in the overall national export of agricultural and food products amounts to 27% and 20%, respectively. More importantly, according to the projections in the analysis, the fact is that the region shows strong exporting potential for the coming period. Namely, the export potential projections made in line with the global trends in demand and the competitive advantages of the country relative to other countries show significant exporting opportunities for a number of agricultural goods (fresh vegetables and fruit, frozen vegetables and fruit), canned food and confectionary products, metal and metal products, as well as furniture, said Lazarov.
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