Ministry of Finance designed software in which all budget users will have to register their arrears. Thus, there will be constant insight into the arrears in real time. Law providing this has already been prepared, Minister of Finance Dragan Tevdovski announced in an interview for MTV.
Tevdovski said that around EUR 360 million hidden arrears by the public institutions they inherited is a considerable amount of accumulated arrears, if one takes into account that Macedonia’s deficit is around EUR 300 million.
– Second very important thing is that we managed to pay part of these arrears short afterwards. For instance, with respect to the Philharmonic Orchestra building, which opening was pompous, there were practically substantial arrears inherited from the previous Government. We managed to pay most of these arrears, he said in the interview.
Tevdovski stressed that increasing the transparency is a key step since the public will have insight into how the money is spent, thus being able to put a pressure on spending the funds properly
– My personal opinion is that both transparency and its solid increase are the first step towards normalization and stabilization of the developments in Macedonia, not only the economic ones, but in general as well.
As for the projected growth of 3.2% for this year, Tevdovski said it was realistic.
– Stabilization of the political situation, coupled with restored confidence of investors, should contribute to increasing the private investments – the missing link in the previous years to attain this. For the first time, substantial amount of funds is allocated in the Budget, above all, for domestic enterprises, in addition to the foreign ones. Such amount includes funds aimed at supporting investments, creating jobs, etc. This is one aspect, while the other one is a lot of hard work put by the Ministry of Finance into increasing the transparency so as to restore both credibility and confidence of investors, Tevdovski explained.
With respect to realization of capital investments amounting to EUR 400 million in this year’s Budget, Tevdovski said that Ministry of Finance will put a strong pressure for the capital investments to be realized, since this will provide for reviving the economy.