Skopje, 7 September 2021 (MIA) – The only way towards quicker economic recovery in the post-COVID period is to focus on the regional market and let Western Balkan countries become an important segment of global production chains. In that regard, we are trying to create consistent economic policies. We’ve prepared a medium-term public debt management plan, medium-term economic growth acceleration plan and intervention investment plan, Deputy PM Fatmir Bytyqi said on Tuesday. At the “Public and Private Investments and Competitiveness” panel within the “Economic Recovery and Growth beyond Covid” conference, Bytyqi said that these things combined are the answer to issues related to public debt and achieving pre-COVID levels. “We’re giving our economy a chance to reach the level we feel it should be at and enabling a rapid and sustainable economic growth that will significantly improve our citizens’ quality of life,” Bytyqi added. He also discussed the 2021-2027 Intervention Investment Plan, set to ensure the country's rapid sustainable economic growth. He said the seven-year period coincides with the European Commission's support plans and stipulates investments amounting to EUR 8.2 billion, of which 50% come from the real sector. “We are going to support private investments and realize public investments in parallel. Private investments will focus on production, trading, tourism, food production and the energy sector, which will be one of the key sectors for future GDP growth. On the other hand, public investments will go towards infrastructure, roads and railroads, as well as investments in healthcare and local communal infrastructure. The Intervention Investment Plan will help us act on economic development in the post-COVID period and focus on multiple things. Our main goal will be to motivate competitiveness at local level, to make the country a competitive and attractive destination, at individual and regional level as well. This way, we will raise the region’s competitiveness, instead of creating competitiveness between the countries of the region,” Bytyqi underlined. The Deputy PM also talked about the effects of the government’s economic anti-COVID measures. “After we implemented measure, economic indicators became positive. We presented measures with an overall value of EUR 1.1 billion, around 11% of the GDP, public funds meant for dealing with the consequences of the coronavirus crisis, which resulted in North Macedonia being one of the countries with the lowest drop in GDP, around 4.5% by the end of 2020. According to our projections and analyses, if we didn’t implement these six sets of measures, the GDP would have dropped 8.7% compared to 2019, and I think what we did was a truly significant success,” Bytyqi said. Minister of Economy Kreshnik Bekteshi, Minister of Transport and Communications Blagoj Bochvarski, EIB Vice President Lilyana Pavlova, EBRD First Vice President Jürgen Rigterin, IFC Regional Manager for Central and Southeast Europe Ary Naim, as well as representatives of the three biggest economic chambers also participated in the panel. dk/mm