22nd May 2018, Skopje – Data on the growth of wages published by the State Statistical Office is an indicator that the economic policies and measures the Government implements yield results, Minister of Finance Dragan Tevdovski said today in a Press Release. He also referred to the data about the 5.6% annual growth of the wage in March, published by the State Statistics Office.
– When comparing the first three months this year with the first three months last year, growth is higher by around 5%. This is above all a result of one of the first measures we implemented, i.e. increase of the minimum wage, by which around 90,000 workers in Macedonia had their wages increased. What is important for us is that the growth of minimum wages of workers contributed to the growth of wages in labour-intensive industries. It is a matter of workers from the textile, leather, and manufacture of wearing apparel industries. They had previously unjustly lower level of minimum wage. The last report on the wages in these three textile, wearing apparel and leather industries indicates that the growth of wages in March this year ranges between 15% and 21% compared to previous year – Tevdovski said. As of recently, the Government also adopted a measure for financial support for increasing the wages in the labour intensive industries. In addition, the measures for supporting the small- and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the active employment measures are also expected to bring positive effects.