Skopje, 28 July 2022 (MIA) – Under the supplementary budget recently adopted by Parliament, culture budget will be cut by 34.6%, said Minister of Culture Bisera Kostadinovska-Stojchevska on Thursday. The Ministry of Culture’s program section sustained the most cuts, she added. “The Ministry of Culture’s budget suffered additional cuts from funds meant to procure new IT equipment for he Ministry, to reward the Ministry’s employees with funds that exist in the budget, not other cultural institutions, so that we can sustain the projects and beneficiaries whose sole income comes through the Ministry of Culture, including independent artists,” the Minister said after today’s meeting with the media. She stated a process of intensive talks are under way with all national institutions if a level of solidarity is shown and for them to allow parts of their programs to be cut because these cuts will sustain the employees’ salaries, adding that the Ministry employees are at the level of public administration and their wage increases are yet to be regulated. Kostadinovska-Stojchevska said that this budget cut was also due to increased electricity costs, and that capital investments will sustain the least amount of cuts, i.e. repurposing capital investments for salaries or electricity. She also said that we need institutions that will enable having an active cultural scene, because other users fulfil their projects in cultural institutions. The Minister of Culture emphasized that investments in facilities, i.e. improving and building new cultural buildings, will not stop. She said that a new shipment of Macedonian icons has been discovered. “In the restitution process with the Republic of Albania of already stolen icons, when the process of 25 icons rounded up, we discovered a new shipment, and 23-24 out of 45 turned out to be ours. We created a team out of the Ministry of Culture and the Directorate for Protection of Cultural Heritage that have been sent out to the field and they're working on identifying the other icons,” Kostadinovska-Stojchevska said. She called for better legislation for solving these processes in the future, adding that only the involved ministries in North Macedonia and Albania are communicating, and she announced that the US Embassy in North Macedonia will aid them in this context. dk/ba/