VMRO – DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski held Sunday a press conference where he spoke about the current economic situation in the country. Analyzing the policies of the government which announced great progress, he underlined that “instead of offensive, we got economic fiasco”.

For the third year now, the Macedonian economy, the citizens are being devastated. We have a total fiasco of this economic tsunami which is nowadays a reality in the Republic of Macedonia. Although during the rebalance in 2017, the beginning of 2018, the beginning of 2019 each year was announced as a practical economic offensive and economic year. But, instead, we get economic fiasco, crime and corruption in the smallest atoms of the Macedonian administration led by the political elite of Zoran Zaev and SDSM. What are the real numbers, what are the real parameters of the Macedonian economy? I’ll start with the foreign direct investments that were repeated many times by Zoran Zaev, Angjusev and when there was economic fiasco trio Tevdovski, that they ht a record in 2018. That was so. We said it then, and I will say it today, because the foreign investors who were brought by the previous governments in the Republic of Macedonia, because of to the increased taxes in 2019, decided to reinvest the accumulated profits and other successful economic parameters. And for these reasons in 2018 we had a solid level of foreign investment, Mickoski said.

The leader of VMRO-DPMNE elaborated on the fact and the numbers in 2019.

Namely, in the second quarter of 2019, the total level of foreign direct investments announced by the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia is EUR 7.6 million. Since the beginning of the year including June 30, including the second quarter of 2019, the level of foreign investment is EUR 48.7 million. In the months of May and June we have even an outflow we have a negative balance of foreign direct investment. For example, for the same period our northern neighbor Serbia had 1.7 billion euros, Slovenia, which has approximately the same population as the Republic of Macedonia, had 561 million, neighboring Bulgaria 286 million, while Croatia only in the first quarter of 2019 had 273m euros of foreign direct investment, Mickoski underlined.

The third parameter he spoke about today at his press conference is the number of workers in industry.

In July, the number of workers in industry in 2019 compared to the number of workers in industry in 2018 was 2.5% lower, and since the beginning of the year from January to July 2019 the number of workers in industry is 1.2% lower than it was in the same period in 2018. Construction, another field where we have economic tsunami, economic fiasco. Namely, since the beginning of the year including June, including the second quarter of 2019, construction activities performed by Macedonian companies abroad are 88.5% lower than those performed during the same period in 2018, Mickoski said.