Publication: North Macedonia Systematic Country Diagnostic Update: Navigating Challenges, Embracing Opportunities
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2023-11-10
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2023-11-10
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The 2018 North Macedonia SCD evaluated the country’s economic development and recognized its impressive progress in reducing poverty and advancing shared prosperity. Between 2002 and 2018, income per capita doubled, and the country rose from lower-middle-income to upper-middle-income status. In the wake of the global financial crisis, a sustained increase in the incomes of households in the bottom 40 percent of the distribution halved the headcount poverty rate to about 20 percent, and years of inclusive growth drove one of the world’s steepest declines in inequality. While this assessment was broadly positive, it also highlighted challenges that could make progress difficult to sustain unless structural reforms were advanced including within the European Union (EU) accession negotiations context. The SCD presented three complementary pathways for North Macedonia to achieve faster, more inclusive, and sustainable growth: (i) increasing productivity; (ii) enhancing job opportunities for all; and (iii) achieving sustainability through effective governance, fiscal prudence, enhanced environmental management and resilience to natural hazards. Five years later, these same pathways remain central to inclusive growth and poverty reduction in North Macedonia. North Macedonia envisions a future characterized by higher productivity and better paid jobs; enhanced infrastructure and public services that allow a more balanced regional development; a sustainable environment and higher resilience to shocks; and, ultimately, being a member of the EU. Unfortunately, the country lags on these aspirations and grapples with the pressing issue of population decline and emigration. Numerous factors contribute to the wave of emigration, encompassing political polarization, corruption, eroded trust in public institutions, perceptions of socioeconomic inequality, persisting intergenerational poverty, low-quality healthcare and education systems, and alarming levels of air pollution.
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“World Bank. 2023. North Macedonia Systematic Country Diagnostic Update: Navigating Challenges, Embracing Opportunities. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40596 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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