5th September 2017, Skopje – Government of the Republic of Macedonia and the World Bank hold same attitudes towards development of Macedonian economy in future – Minister of Finance Dragan Tevdovski said, upon the meeting held at the Government’s building between the World Bank’s Regional Director for Western Balkans, Linda Van Gelder and Prime Minister Zoran Zaev and the Ministers in charge of the economy.
At the meeting, both parties agreed that the World Bank would be a strong partner to Macedonia in the development and reform process in the upcoming period. At present, World Bank’s current portfolio in Macedonia amounts to US$ 350 million, and at today’s meeting in the Government’s building, the possibilities for Macedonia to become a high-income country were also taken into consideration.
Priorities for extending support in different areas, such as improvement of the municipal infrastructure, reconstruction and rehabilitation of the existing road infrastructure, energy efficiency, social protection and transparency were also considered. Special attention was also paid to the public finance management and the efficiency of public spending.
– MoF has already commenced to realize a number of measures, being indicated in the World Bank’s strategic documents. Transparency of public finance is one of the key areas as regards the reforms, which should be realized. To the end, transparency in the public finance reporting has been significantly improved. Monthly and quarterly data on the Budget execution by budget users and municipalities can now be found on MoF website. The semi-annual report on the Budget execution has been revised. There is information on overdue liabilities. We are also working with the World Bank on a project for settling these liabilities. We also published a Citizens’ Budget for the purpose of increasing public awareness, as well as intensifying citizens’ inclusion in the creation of government documents – Minister of Finance said.
– We had a constructive discussion with the Government representatives about how Macedonia can become a high-income country. We strive for establishing efficient partnership in achieving economic progress and equal prosperity for all citizens. We discussed about a series of mutually related areas in which the reforms could help Macedonia to reach the high-income country status. These areas are the following: macroeconomic stability and sustainability, integration in the global economy, business surrounding favourable for investments and growth of the private sector, access to equal possibilities for all citizens, as well as efficient and transparent institutions, as pointed out by the World Bank’s Regional Director for Western Balkans, Linda Van Gelder.