Vesna Garvanlieva Andonova, Senior Economist at CEA participated in the European Week of Regions and Cities held in Brussels last week.

Vesna took part in the panel Territorial governance as development chance for the Western Balkans. In response to the presented overall challenges of the Western Balkan by the TG-WeB, she presented some of the challenges in North Macedonia related to the decade long balanced regional development policy and the fiscal decentralization challenges.

In the invited comments for the case of North Macedonia she stressed that the disparities among the regions between Skopje planning region and the remaining regions in terms of social, economic, demographic, spatial cohesion in the past decade have not shown convergence and closing the gap.  

“The failure to implement the law is evident since the 1% annual GDP funds that are supposed to be dedicated to the program as stipulated by law, have amounted to only annual average funds of only 0.03% per year (that is 33 times less each year in the last decade compared to what the legislation stipulates).

The ineffectiveness seen only through one indicator such as the GDP per capita shows enormous gap between the Skopje Planning region and the other seven regions and no signs of closing the gap or convergence. The strategic objectives and impact expected for social, economic, demographic, spatial cohesion has failed by large.”

More info on the session: Territorial governance as development chance for the Western Balkans

Position paper: TG-WeB Postion Paper on Territorial Governance for Western Balkans

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