Macedonia Sends More Agents Abroad to Attract Investment

The Agency for Foreign Investment this week announced a contest for eight new promoters. The winning candidates will be sent to Belgium, Denmark, South Korea, Canada, Britain, Turkey, the United States and France.

“In some countries, as in Belgium and South Korea, we will be sending promoters for the first time,” Agency officials told Balkan Insight. “In others, as in the US, the new promoters will strengthen the work of the ones already there”.

While the government hopes the advertisers’ work will yield results, no official data exists on how much foreign investment the existing promoters have attracted in the two years since they were sent.

The Agency head, Viktor Mizo, recently told the Macedonian daily Utrinski Vesnik it was not true that spending money on promoters was a waste of resources. 

“Even if they attract only one investment of 50 million euros, their work will have paid off,” he said. In 2008, according to data, the state spent about 600,000 euros on the 23 agents.  

In 2009, Macedonia attracted a total of some 180 million euros, or 81 euros per capita in FDI, according to official data. This marked a large decline from 2008, when the sum amounted to half a billion euros. The authorities attributed the fall to the effects of the global economic downturn.

However, in the same year, neighbouring countries had much better results. In 2009 Croatia, attracted 1.8 billion euros in FDI, or 410 euros per capita. Serbia also had over 1.8 billion euros, worth 256 euros per capita. Montenegro marked 800 million euros, or 1,230 euros per capita, while Bosnia and Herzegovina won 452 million euros in FDI, or 122 euros per capita.

In the first quarter of this year Macedonia attracted only 70 million euros in FDI, while all the above-mentioned countries attracted much more.