PPD Start-Up Challenges - the Macedonian Experience

Описание: The National Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness Council (NECC) was established in 2012 following a longer period of preparations and consultations of all stakeholders from the private, civil and the public sector. The NECC was initiated as the highest national Public-Private Dialogue forum with key support from USAID's IDEAS project, with a direct partnership status to the Government's economic policy cabinet and with high level commitment for cooperation.

Senior Advisor Goran Lazarevski shares the challenges of the business community in Macedonia before the set up of the NECC, as well as the challenges of improving the efficiency of dialogue between the public and the private sectors. Macedonia had a complex structure of 17 chambers of commerce which were engaging with the government in their own way, having no coordination mechanism whatsoever. This had led to an overall weak and inefficient dialogue dynamic between the government and the business community. Research showed that this fragmented business community had had no capacity to approach the government with proposals which were focused, evidence-based and research-based. Another challenge was to change the mentality of the business community, which was used to think that the government would single-handedly come up with the solutions to their problems, giving up this way their right to object. Therefore, training not just the chambers of commerce but companies themselves on not only identifying problems but solutions as well became a necessity. Given this challenging environment, Mr. Lazareski concludes that this training and ‘education’ of the private sector in engaging in a more efficient dialogue with the government required a lot of work.