Skopje, 19 June 2023 (MIA) - The Chamber of Commerce of North-West Macedonia demands the Government to reduce contributions, liberalize the workforce, and increase quotas for foreign workers. According to the Chamber, these are part of the solutions to overcome the problem of labor shortage, and a long-term program should be developed in which the Ministry for Education and Science will play the main role in order to create adequate profiles for the domestic economy.

The Government's position is to liberalize the labor market and increase quotas for foreign workers, which is currently limited to 5,000, however, according to the Deputy PM for Economic Affairs, Fatmir Bytyqi, this should be a short-term solution because in the long-term the workforce should primarily be composed of internal sources, and that requires further qualifications and re-qualifications be done to the existing work force.

"There are currently thousands of vacancies, and over 105,000 citizens are looking for a job. The question is why those positions aren’t taken up by those unemployed. It is because these employees are not trained in the professions required by the labor market," Bytyqi told an annual conference discussing the local business community's challenges amid globalization and digitization. 

Analyses show that North Macedonia lacks about 100,000 workers per year, with construction and tourism being the most affected.

"The shortage of work force is not a problem only North Macedonia faces, but the entire Western Balkans and the EU as well," said Bytyqi. According to the European Trade Union Institute, there are record labor shortages from 2019 to 2022, and in 2022 alone, a quarter of EU businesses reported productions problems as a result of labor shortages.

The President of MASIT, Aneta Pesheva, believes that there are two problems that need to be resolved - how to keep young people in the country and how to bring back the workforce that has already left. Pesheva adds that the main problem is that people with connections and political affiliations are being employed, which irritates young people. What needs to be done is that universities should be the main accelerators for student employment, and a model needs to be created for staggering payment of contributions.

"In Romania and Bulgaria they made a boom by exempting the IT industry from paying taxes, especially young people, and then everyone returned," Pesheva noted.

More promotion is needed, according to the business, especially in the areas that would bring people back to the country. ssh/nn/

Photo: MIA