S&T Country Report - Albania - WBC-INCO Net

3 Conclusions / Recommendations
The Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia has made recently very
important steps ahead in the SMEs development and can be soon joining Croatia in
leading the Western Balkan countries’ group in this field. The Macedonian SME
Strategy is in place and defining the general direction within SME Development in the
country till 2013. The SME Programme rules the implementation of the SME
Strategy, and the SME EU Charter sets the priorities necessary to achieve EU
Accession.
Clusters are supported by a number of donor initiatives and additionally there is a
donor financed programme to facilitate technology transfer. The major cluster
financier in the country is USAID with the ‘Macedonia’s Competitiveness Activity’
(MCA). This project helped to develop five clusters (in tourism, textile, information
technologies, wine, as well as lamb and cheese industries).
Five technology transfer centres were established and are operating with support of
the TEMPUS Programme and the German Programme for Technical Cooperation
(GTZ). There is an agreement between the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, the
‘Economic Chamber of Macedonia’, the ‘Management and Industrial Research
Foundation’ (MIR) and the ‘Agency for Promotion of Entrepreneurship of the Republic
of Macedonia’ (APERM) to establish the European Information and Innovation
Center. The Center should facilitate an access to the European Union's
Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP).
The creation of technology and entrepreneurship support infrastructures in FYR of
Macedonia is in the core of the research and technology development strategy of the
country. At the moment, there is no technology park operating in the country but the
feasibility study of the Bitola Technology Park was already concluded.
There is no strategy for business incubators and no funds have been allocated for
them. The new programme for stimulating investment for 2007 – 2010 was created
and approved, but it does not foresee either further support for existing incubators or
the establishment of new ones. At the moment, there are seven business incubators
in operation (created with support of the World Bank in 1997) and two business startup
centers created in 2006 and 2007.
According to the Revised National Development Strategy for Small and Medium-
Sized Enterprises (2002 – 2013), the coordination of cross-cutting policy issues
between ministries is inadequate and an SME Task Force is missing that would
ensure coherence and continuity. On the other hand, also coordination among the
donors and between the donors and the Government does not focus sufficiently on
achieving the common goal - SME development. Consultation mechanisms with the
private sector (like for instance the SME Forum) have not matured. Newly
established support institutions are still in the phase of development. Due to these
circumstances, SME policy should be fully integrated into the overall economic
planning process to ensure synergy rather than overlap. Effective stakeholder
coordination mechanisms (ministries, agencies, other governmental bodies, donors,
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