Skopje, 6 May 2022 (MIA) – Macedonia2025, a non-governmental organization,  will hold its 11th Summit on May 17-19 in Skopje. Around 40 speakers take part with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovachevski and his Serbian counterpart Ana Brnabic among them. According to the organizer, the focus of the summit will be efforts that can be made to avoid crises, to become more productive, which in turn will improve the people’s living standard and the business surroundings for companies. “The summit begins with economic topics and with looking into current issues and what’s happening in the Western Balkans, and then we will move on to the topics we believe will bring a better future. We want to show success stories from Macedonian businesses and businesses in the region. We’re expecting around 40 speakers and around 400 attendees. The main topic of the summit will be related to technology and digitization, and how they bring us towards the future of companies, workforce and administration, i.e., how they can help us become more effective, more productive, and improve the living standard,” said Nikica Mojsoska Blazhevski, head executive director of Macedonia2025. She said that participants from the Western Balkans and Southeast Europe will be the predominant speakers at the Summit, as well as representatives of the Macedonian diaspora mainly from the US and Canada. “The local and global economy are facing one of the toughest crises in recent history, a combination of reduced production and problems in food delivery chains, as well as growing inflation and stagflation. This is very tough for carriers of economic policies, because the applicable measures to increase local production, meaning the GDP, are contradictory to the measures which should be applied to reduce the growing inflation. Therefore, the best policies right now would be those that help the most vulnerable categories of citizens, and think of the future at the same time, increasing investments in infrastructure, education – investments in human capital,” Mojsoska Blazhevski said in response to a question. She also said that the measures should be limited and highly targeted, because they create expectations for the future and large budget deficits which will have to be returned from all citizens, either with higher tax rates or another way. “The citizens and businesses will be the ones expected to supply the funds to repay the debts. That’s why I am all for short, direct/targeted measures, and not large-scale measures. We need to be thinking about the future, which is why there needs to be a limit to the growth of paychecks and pensions, because the money will have to be paid back,” Mojsoska Blazhevski emphasized. dk/ba/