The honourable Jerry Naumoff was only sworn in as Minister of Investments for the Government of the Republic of Macedonia in May 9, 2013, but in less than a year’s time he’s been incredibly busy traveling around the world explaining the benefits of investing and outsourcing in Macedonia to French, American Chinese, Indian and Italian business leaders. He’s been promoting Macedonia’s highly educated workforce and boasting the lowest operating costs in Europe. Macedonia doesn’t have the high taxes, complex regulatory system and aggressive labor unions that exist in the rest of Europe and North America.
Macedonia is a candidate for EU accession with a stable economy and a lot of potential for growth. It has a highly educated young population; with a median age of 36.5. Due to the global recession, Macedonia suffered from a reduction in foreign direct investment. Nevertheless, conservative fiscal policies have kept the Macedonian economy stable while other neighboring European countries have suffered. Macroeconomic stability has been maintained by prudent monetary policy which has kept the domestic currency pegged against the euro. Since the recession Macedonia has kept a stable credit rating, kept inflation under control and maintained modest growth.
Jerry Naumoff has a plan to bring foreign direct investment back to Macedonia. His strategy involves targeting both large corporations with the ability to bring a large number of jobs to Macedonia, along with smaller and mid-sized companies which have been ignored by most national economic promotion schemes. Smaller companies have a less bloated internal bureaucracy and thus are able to make decisions faster and can more quickly set up an operation in Macedonia. The benefit to these smaller and mid-size companies, many of which already have the desire to go global, is that they will feel welcomed, appreciated and will find it much easier to make personal connections in Macedonia than they would in the typical giant outsource locations of China or India.
Mr. Naumoff has an extensive resume. He is the Founder and Past President of The Naumoff Group, Inc, a risk management advisory firm in Chicago, Illinois. He was nominated to the Macedonia 2025 Board of Directors where he still serves as an Honorary Board Member, to US Senator Mark Kirk’s European Advisory Board representing the Chicago area Macedonian-American community and to the Macedonian Diaspora’s Advisory Council. He also co-founded NSR International LLC, a private label European mineral water and started Communicare Inc, a web-based HR self service application. Recently Mr. Naumoff has been appointed Distinguished Fellow of New Westminster College in Vancouver Canada. Last month in India, he was a key note speaker at the Confederation of Indian Industry Partnership Summit in front of 1 000 business and governmental leaders from around the world.
Macedonia 2025 is an organization dedicated to improving the economic situation in Macedonia for its citizens by creating opportunities for foreign investment. While on the board, Mr. Naumoff focused on engaging the Macedonian Diaspora, increasing transparency in government and by encouraging IT companies to outsource creative high tech IT jobs to Macedonia- goals he continues to pursue as Minister for Foreign Investment. Furthermore, he has said,
By continuing to strongly stress education, entrepreneurial risk taking, business ethics, personal honor, patriotism, family and traditional Macedonian values, and old-fashioned hard work, Macedonia will keep rising stronger and stronger every year and hopefully by 2025 many of our people from all over the world in the Diaspora will be either coming back to Macedonia, investing in Macedonia, or wishing they could return here.
Mr. Naumoff will be speaking at the South Eastern European Business Forum hosted by the NATO Council of Canada on February 28 in Toronto. With his extensive experience in business and Macedonian-Diaspora relations, Mr. Naumoff will certainly have some interesting insights not just into the opportunities for investment in Macedonia but also into how other countries can utilize their Diasporas to promote domestic economic growth.
