These days an information was disseminated that the German companies evaluated the work of the Government with a “zero”, as a result of a survey conducted within the period from 01.02.2019 to 08.03.2019, within which 41 companies participated. The question which raised the spirits in the past 10 days is the following: “In general, how do you evaluate the work of the current Government?”
Link to the original article here.
Link to the archived original article here.
This story is a spin and an attempt to present the survey of the Delegation of the German Economy about the business climate in N. Macedonia in a selective manner and in a negative connotation.
The aim of the headline is to lead the readers to think that the Government has been evaluated with a “zero”, while actually this is not true. The public was only presented with the information that none, or “zero” companies responded that the Government performs well (as it is stated in the analysis of texts deriving from this event by Crithink: Тенденциозно извлекување оценка која не постои).
The texts do not say that almost half of the respondents (49%) gave the Government a satisfactory grade. This is especially important if one takes into consideration that only 20% out of 200 companies with German capital present in North Macedonia have participated in the survey, which means that one cannot derive a general conclusion. And secondly, and importantly, if one analyses the structure of the companies that have been surveyed, they will arrive to a conclusion that 42% of the surveyed companies are small or medium-sized, while 54% are companies that participate with 20% or 40% in the export, a fact which was not presented to the public at all.
Supporting these conclusions is the response to the question: “Would you invest again in Macedonia?” on which as many as 76% of the companies responded positively, which is a higher percentage than 2018, when only 74% responded positively. Additionally, the percentage of companies that plan to engage new employees has increased from 37% in 2018 to 39% in 2019. In favor of the claim that the German companies in general trust the government team and its policy are the responses to several questions that reflect the perception of the companies about the business climate in the next period. For example, 43% of the surveyed companies stated that their financial situation will improve compared to the previous year. 41,7% expect the exports to increase, while 43% will have increased investment costs.
As a conclusion, analyzing the responses to the survey conducted by the Delegation of the German Economy about the business climate in N. Macedonia, one can say that by public and transparent announcement of the results from the survey, the German investors actually help the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, indicating inconsistencies, but also positive trends, in order to speed-up the processes of transformation and overcoming the weaknesses of the system, and to support the processes that yield positive results. German companies are very important part of the Macedonian economy, especially because of the fact that they employ approximately 20.000 people and contribute towards increasing the export.
The entire presentation of the results from this-year’s survey can be found here.
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