POChNA POSETATA NA MINISTEROT TAShKOVIKK NA AVSTRALIJA
PREZENTIRANI KAPACITETITE NA MAKEDONIJA VO Z. AVSTRALIJA
Minatiot petok, na meggunarodniot aerodrom vo Pert, pristigna ministerot za stranski investicii na Republika Makedonija, Gligor Tashkovikk.
Toj beshe prechekan vo VIP Lounge na aerodromot, od strana na pochesniot konzul na Republika Makedonija, Zoran KKoseski, kako i pripadnici na Makedonskata zaednica vo Zapadna Avstralija. Vednash po prechekot, delegacijata se upati kon avtomobilot specijalno iznajmen za ovaa prilika, na koj gordo se veeshe makedonskoto zname.
Vo sabotata, ministerot Tashkovikk gi zapochna prvite direktni razgovori so direktorite na pogolemite avstraliskite kompanii od finansiskiot, rudarskiot, kompjuterskiot, zemjodelskiot i prehranbeniot sektor vo Pert, od koj vekke site najavija sluzhbena poseta na Makedonija kako i direktni investicii.
Istata vecher, vo chest na posetata na ministerot Tashkovikk, makedonskiot konzulat vo Pert priredi svechen koktel za Makedonskata zaednica na koja prsisustvuvaa ugledni i poznati aktivisti od zaednicata, koi imaa prilika lichno da se zapoznat so ministerot.
Svechenata drzhavna ceremonija zapochna koga voditelot na programata, dolgogodishniot aktivist i ugleden biznismen od Zapadna Avstralija g-din Kris Angelkov so prigodni zborovi gi pozdravi uspesite na ministerot Tashkovikk vo negovite napori za privlekuvanje na stranski investicii vo Makedonija, kako i otvoranjeto na makedonskiot konzulat vo Zapadna Avstralija.
Vo svojot pozdraven govor ministerot Tashkovikk se osvrna kon noviot poteg Republika Makedonija da se redefinira kako Singapor vo Evropa so svoite ekonomski kapaciteti kako i mozhnostite za investiranje vo makedonskoto stopanstvo. Istata vecher, pretsedatelot na Makedonskata opshtina g-din Vasil Radev, kako i parohiskiot sveshtenik na Makedonskata pravoslavna crkva "Sveti Nikola" otecot Stanko Jovanovski go pokanija ministerot Tashkovikk da ja poseti makedonskata opshtina vo severniot del na Pert.
Vo nedelata, pri posetata na MPC "Sveti Nikola" ministerot Tashkovikk se sretna so chlenovite na ovaa opshtina.
Ljube Veljanoski

PRIEM KAJ ZORAN ANGELKOVSKI
Vo chest na posetata na ministerot Gligor Tashkovikk, glavniot izvrshen menadzer na Siemens VDO, g-ot Zoran Angelkovski (na slikata), v petok, kke priredi specijalen priem za ministerot Tashkovikk i negovata deelgacija vo prostroiite na kompanijata vo Bandura. Ministerot Tashkovikk kke ima ednochasovna prezentacija vo koja kke gi pretstavi golemite mozhnosti za investiranje vo Makedonija. Na priemot kke prisustvuvaat i Peter Upton - CEO, Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers Canberra; Paul James - Edzecutive Officer, Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers Canberra; Barry Comben - Executive Council Director, Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers Canberra; Robert McCulloch - Executive Director, Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development - State Government of Victoria; Barry Moncur - Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development - State Government of Victoria; Damon Cantwell - Partner and Director , Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; Danica Sekulovska - Partner and Director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; Richard Niven - Executive Director, Invest Australia Canberra; Angele Angelovski - Vice President Manufacturing, Siemens VDO Automotive Australia.

SREDBA TERZIOVSKI - TAShKOVIKK
Prof. Mile Terziovski kke ostvari sredba so ministerot Tashkovikk, v chetvrtok, vo prostoriite na Univerzitetot Melburn. Vo chest na posetata na ministerot, prof. terziovski kke priredi ruchek za nego i negovata delegacija. na ruchekot kke prisustvuvaat i dzejson Kambovski i Ordan Andreevski, domakkini na posetata na Tashkovikk vo Melburn.

Interview with Gligor Tashkovich
Macedonian minister for foreign investment

We are here to spread the message, the vision of Macedonia as the Singapore of Europe

By Liljana Ristova
CMN: Mr. Tashkovich tell us something about yourself. What is your relationship to Macedonia? Our readers would like to know.
Tashkovich:
- I’m named after my grandfather who was the leader of the democratic opposition party during World War II. He also had a successful civil engineering business: not only in Macedonia but also in Slovenia. He was a signatory of the ASNOM Treaty and after World War II, with the help of the International Rescue Committee, he came to America.
After the earthquake of 1963, when those latent televised images of the earthquake reached New York my grandfather had a fatal heart attack and died. He watched the country he had fought so hard for crumble before his eyes.
Then a few months later after the earthquake was over and the dust had settled an inventory was done of all the buildings remaining standing in the country. And they had one thing in common. They had all been done by my grandfather’s civil engineering firm. He was the only one to build earthquake proof buildings, aqueducts, dams and stuff like this. So the houses, parliament building and the presidency of the Republic, the old train station, our family home which was also the seat of government, and other buildings in Skopje and other projects around the country that my grandfather helped build were the buildings that survived the earthquake.
Now if we fast forward to 1991, November of 91 to be exact, as you know Macedonia declared its independence. In February of 92, President Gligorov, who just turned 90 earlier this month and who was a younger contemporary of my grandfather, invited my father to go back to Macedonia. On February of 1992, we received the invitation by fax, an invitation that would realize my grandfather’s dream for democracy and capitalism. So we went back as a family in March of 92. My brother was still in law school, so my father, mother and I went. Soon after we arrived, we met with President Gligorov and I remember him saying “Look around you. See what you take for granted in America. Make it happen here. You have my blessing, we need everything just go do it.” And that started this adventure which is now at the moment culminating in my being Minister in the government.
So your family is from Skopje?
- Skopje and Bitola.
How did you get your current job, working for the government of the Republic of Macedonia?
- Becoming a Minister in the Republic of Macedonia’s government was not my idea. It was someone else’s decision to recruit me. I had traveled to Macedonia twenty seven times between March 1992 and November 2002, trips which I took for business and for developing business relations. I was away for almost four years then I was called back on August 20th, 2006.
What happened in the meantime? What did you do? What was your career path?
- I still had the AMBO project in Macedonia. But for the most part I decided that I could meet visiting delegations when they came to New York or Washington. I had email and fax access and that was sufficient for what we had to do. I had other projects that were taking my time and so I was based more domestically during that time period. But my point is I didn’t seek the position. I wasn’t looking for nor did I dream of becoming a Minister in a foreign country that is so completely outside of my radar. So when the Prime Minister designate called me on August 6 and invited me to join his government, how could I say no? At the very least it was going to be an amazing adventure.
Many Macedonians still don’t know about the AMBO project. What is it and how did it come about?
- That’s a really good question. Think about what was happening back in 1992, 93, 94. President Clinton had come to power on the motto “it’s the economy, stupid”. He was determined to focus inwardly to fix America’s economy and to let foreign affairs be managed by somebody else. And Milosovich was starting wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia. My father was watching all this from a distance, from New York and he said Bosnia is very much similar to Macedonia. It’s a multiethnic society. If it can happen in Bosnia it can happen in Macedonia. But as you can see America is not interested in what happens in Bosnia.
They don’t care because there is no oil there. That was an incredibly cynical remark and one I didn’t really agree with but what my father said was we need to give a reason for Washington to care about the future of Macedonia. So I’m going to build an oil pipeline through it and they will take notice. Watch. And that’s how the project began. It began to give America a reason to care about the territorial integrity and the future of the Republic of Macedonia.
What benefits will the project bring to Macedonia?
- It brings a dedicated supply of crude oil if the people operating the refinery want it, at the moment they don’t but if they do it does. It brings lower cost of oil to what we have now. It would cost the refinery about $6 per ton to move oil from Borgos on the Black Sea to the refinery door. Currently they are paying $19 a ton to move the oil from Salonica to the refinery door. So between $6 and $ 19 is a huge difference when you calculate this over a million tons a year. In fact it’s 13 million dollars a year of savings which is a lot of money for Macedonia. That’s money the government pays which is less than half the pay. If we could use that money for schools, for education, for something else it would be tremendous. The problem is the government of Ljubco Georgievski that signed this agreement tied Macedonia to this Faustian bargain for a very long time and it will take a long time to cancel that contract unfortunately.
What progress has been made with the implementation of AMBO since the Sofia summit of December 28, 2004?
- On January 31st 2007, at the end of some three years of negotiations, there was a signing of the intergovernmental treaty document at the ministerial level between all three countries. This document is now being ratified by the three parliaments. The ratification of the Macedonian issue takes place next week, June 4th, 2007. This is the final ratification, it has been through all the committees and it’s really great news. Bulgaria is going to ratify it about the same time. I’m not sure about the Albanian status right now. In any event once ratified this treaty provides a common set of rules for all outside investors regarding the construction, the operation and maintenance of the pipeline. So this means that if you are a multigazillionaire in Monaco and you want to invest in oil pipelines you’re not investing in Albania, Macedonia, or Bulgaria. You are investing in some mythical country called the United Balkans. From the perspective of the investor it’s like investing in one country because what this treaty document does is it creates a common set of rules so you don’t have to worry about the individual laws or regulations in these countries or that they might change because the treaty supercedes anything that might happen at the state level. With the ratification of all three parliaments the treaty goes into effect and then we can start to seek investors and they can pay money, we hope.
What is the purpose of your visit to Canada?
- We have a wonderful story to tell in Macedonia. We have a vision for our future in a country which has really had visions because the people have been worried or preoccupied too often with how they are going to survive the next day, forget about a week, a month, a year or ten years or thirty years in the future. So we are here to spread the message, the vision of Macedonia as the Singapore of Europe. Singapore was a swamp forty years ago. Luckily in Macedonia we are starting out with considerably better conditions than this to maybe in twenty or thirty years we could achieve and become like Singapore. We already have free trade zones, they’re actually called free economic zones. The technical name is the technological industrial development zone. But you can’t pronounce it let alone remember it so we call them free economic zones. We’re sitting at the crossroads of two trading routes, north-south and east-west. Our routes are land based, Singapore’s are sea based. That’s their strength. We have free trade agreements, forty free trade agreements to me more precise, from Iceland to Turkey including Ukraine and Russia, a market of 650 million people. We have wage rates as low as China. I was in a meeting with the vice mayor of Shanghai in December and he told me his wage rates are the same as ours. China has no advantage over Macedonia anymore, certainly not for serving the European marketplace. We have the lowest taxes in Europe cumulatively, even though we introduced the flat tax. So this year in 2007 12% corporate tax, 12% personal tax flat. Next year January 1, 2008 it will be reduced to10% for both. If you invest in our free economic zones you receive a ten year tax holiday and then for the first five years a 50% discount on the personal income tax. If you are outside of the zones you can take advantage of something called the 0% profit reinvestment tax. If you reinvest the profits of your business you pay no tax. So let’s say you make a million Euros in profit, you reinvest 900,000 you are only left with 100,000 in profit and you pay 10% on that. It’s a big incentive to expand your business, to hire people and export because except for the unemployment rate and the trade deficit we have a very good macroeconomic picture. We have rising GDP growth, we have a balanced budget in the government, unheard of in Europe for so many years in a row. We have a stable currency and our inflation is under 2% a year on average for the last five years. They are great conditions to build on, a very good base. Now we just need to learn how to promote ourselves. So I’m starting this process by traveling around the world telling our story and spreading the message.
“Canadian Macedonian News”, Toronto, June 2007

REZIL: TAPKAROSHI PRED "PASOSHKO"
Brojche za pasosh za 100 denari
Smrdea, turkanici, dolgi redici, skisnati lica, nervozni deca, chekanje od izgrejsonce za fakjanje red... Ova maltretiranje vo novoto Pasoshko oddelenie na MVR vo zgradata na MTV mozhe da se izbegne ako si kupite ponisko redno brojche od vasheto, a koe chini 200 do 500 denari. Prodavaat i tie na koi ne im se brza da izvadat pasosh i ne im se cheka vo redot, a ne sakaat da go podarat badijala, a se pojavile i takvi koi zemaat redno brojche rano nautro i podocna mu go prodavaat na nekoj shto mora da cheka da pominat 200 do 300 lugje pred nego.
Novite biometriski pasoshi za lica nad 27 godini chinat 2.000 denari, a za pomladite od 27 godini 1.750 denari. Procedurata za vadenje pasosh trae od pet do 15 dena, a poradi mnogute aplikanti i zastojot vo sistemot mozhe da trae i podolgo. Za zemanje pasosh po brza postapka za 48 chasa se plakjaat dopolnitelni 4.500 denari. So kupuvanje brojche se izbegnuva popusto chekanje ako brojcheto shto ste go dobile legalno e mnogu visoko, pa poradi bavnosta na procedurata mozhe da ne se dojde na red, a rednoto brojche shto kje go zemete denes ne vazhi za utre. Gragjanite se pomirija da chekaat i po dve nedeli za pasosh, no nikako ne mozhat da se pomirat so uslovite vo Pasoshkoto oddelenie, osobeno sega koga site odat da vadat pasoshi i metezhot e nepodnosliv. Se zhalat deka ventilacijata e slaba, smrdi, nema dovolno mesto za sedenje, pa kolkavi se turkanicite vnatre, tolkavi se i nadvor na skalite pred vlezot. (Vest)

TRIFUN KOSTOVSKI VO PUSTEC
Gradonachalnikot na Skopje ja poseti Mala Prespa
Skopje i Pustec naskoro mozhe da potpishat dogovor shto kje opfati sorabotka vo povekje sferi, najavi vo nedelata od Pustec skopskiot gradonachalnik Trifun Kostovski koj imashe sredba so svojot kolega Edmond Temelko, prviot Makedonec gradonachalnik vo Albanija. "Kje napravime se' shto e vo nasha mozhnost da vi pomogneme zashto gragjanite na Pustec toa i go ochekuvaat po pobedata na partijata na gradonachalnikot Temelko", reche Kostovski. Skopskiot gradonachalnik mu podari na Temelko kompjuter za potrebite na opshtinata i najavi donacija na ushte kompjuteri i specijalno vozilo za komunalen otpad.
Zablagodaruvajkji se za poddrshkata, Temelko reche: "Ochekuvame poddrshka od Makedonija zashto 40 do 50 otsto od nashata izborna programa se zasnovashe vrz faktot deka proektite kje se realiziraat so pomosh od matichnata drzhava Makedonija" i naglasi deka ne ochekuva pomosh samo od vladata tuku i od privatni biznismeni.

HAOS VO SKOPJE
Nema grobni mesta!
Na skopskite grobishta Butel ima ushte samo 100 slobodni mesta koi, imajkji ja pred vid dinamikata na pogrebi, ne se dovolni za gradot. Na grobishtata vo Kamnik vekje nema mesto, a slichna e sostojbata i so grobishtata vo naselbite Gjorche Petrov, Nerezi, Saraj... Vo pogrebalnoto pretprijatie Butel velat deka poradi golemite goreshtini vo poslednive denovi skopjanite se vo panika zashto strahuvaat deka kje nema grobni mesta ni za tie shto umiraat denovive. Rakovodstvoto na AD Butel denovive kje bara sredba so premierot Nikola Gruevski za da najdat reshenie za nedostigot od grobni mesta. Tehnichkiot direktor na pretprijatieto Ilija Filipovski baral od gradskite vlasti da dozvolat proshiruvanje na grobishtata zashto se ochekuva na desette gradski grobishta vo Skopje poslednite slobodni mesta da se popolnat najdocna do krajot na godinava. (Shpic)

Za eden mesec trojca generali odat vo penzija
Polkovnicite Naser Sejdini i Kire Galazoski stanuvaat generali. Neoficijalno tie se najseriozni kandidati za mesto vo Generalshtabot. Pretsedatelot Branko Crvenkovski traga po tretiot polkovnik koj mozhe da odgovori na predizvikot general. Tolku prazni mesta kje ima vo generalskiot stroj na nachalnikot Miroslav Stojanovski od 18 avgust. Na Denot na armijata vo penzija odat Dragan Andrevski, Atanas Jovchevski i Adil Gazafer, koi pred eden mesec za posleden pat bea unapredeni.
So argumentot deka oficerskiot kadar nema soodvetna obuka za pozicijata general, Ministerstvoto za odbrana ochekuva od shefot na drzhavata pri naznachuvanjeto na novite generali da se konsultira so niv. Taka vladata kje testira kolku e Crvenkovski podgotven za dijalog. Pred dve sedmici od kabinetot na pretsedatelot vozvratija deka vrhovniot komandant naznachuva generali i tuka vladata nema ingerencii. (TV Kanal 5)

Vinata na "Tikvesh" nagradeni vo London
Chetiri vina na vinarskata vizba Tikvesh od serijata Speshl selekshn se nagradeni za svojot vrven kvalitet so najvisoki priznanija na godinashniot Megjunaroden natprevar za vino i zhestoki pijalaci shto tradicionalno se odrzhuva vo London, Velika Britanija. Vinata na Tikvesh se edinstvenite od Republika Makedonija shto se najdoa na spisokot na nagradenite, vo konkurencija od nad 5.000 razlichni vina od 50 zemji.
Vranec speshl selekshn 2004 i Temjanika speshl selekshn 2006 dobija srebren medal, so shto se proglaseni za najdobri vo svojata klasa, a Shardone speshl selekshn 2006 i Merlot speshl selekshn 2004 se zakitija so bronzeno odlichje.