Petreski: Regardless of how Open Balkan will develop in the future, it is important that we collaborate

Economist and Executive Director of the Institute for Economic Research and Policies "Finance Think," Blagica Petreski, says for Kosovo Online that the Open Balkan aims to accelerate structural reforms, which include faster labor market restructuring, and one such facilitation is envisaged within this initiative. She adds that agreements on the free movement of the workforce should reduce administrative procedures for obtaining residence permits and fully facilitate obtaining work permits between the countries of the Open Balkan – North Macedonia, Serbia, and Albania.

In Skopje, on the eve of the gathering of regional leaders regarding the EU's plan for the growth of the Western Balkans worth six billion euros, the start of the implementation of the measure of free access to the labor market in the countries of this initiative was supposed to be marked within the Open Balkan initiative. However, this event, as stated by the Government of North Macedonia, has been postponed until all technical conditions for its implementation are met.

It is stated that all protocols related to the conditions for free access to markets, as well as electronic identification schemes, are fully harmonized, and technical teams in each country are taking the appropriate final steps and activities to ensure this measure benefits citizens as soon as possible.

Petreski notes that the extent to which there will be benefits from the Open Balkan initiative depends on three key factors. She points out that regional economic integration is of great importance for the economy, given the aspirations for full EU membership.

"The first factor is the current structure of the labor market, the second is the size of salaries in the member countries of OB, and the third part is the political will for structural reforms," she notes.

The organization she leads has analyzed the structure and trends in the labor market and found imbalances between supply and demand. She explains that professions involving IT skills are an exception, while, for example, there are drastic surpluses in the field of educational professions, where there are even 75 interested workers for one job.

"On the other hand, we have shortages of professions in the service sector, where the business sector identifies a lack of workers and needs to find a way to fill those gaps. How this initiative will affect such a situation, we certainly need to make an effort if we can attract workers from the countries we are opening up to, such as Serbia and Albania, to compensate for workers in professions where we have fewer workers. Probably such an opportunity exists for the border regions of our country, the eastern and western parts," Petreski emphasizes.

She continues to state that workforce movements are significantly influenced by salaries.

"We have noticed that for certain jobs, especially seasonal ones, there are risks because workers in Serbia could be paid more, potentially for jobs in the IT industry where salaries are again higher in Serbia. On the other hand, we can attract workers to the eastern part of the country, where we have free zones and foreign investors, where salaries are higher and the job is more attractive," Petreski says.

She notes that regardless of how the Open Balkan initiative will develop and be implemented in the future, it should be a motivation to implement reforms faster and more efficiently.

"This especially applies to educational reforms; we need to adapt more quickly to the needs of the labor market because, despite detecting that we have surplus workers in certain professions, we continue to mass-produce such cadres, giving false hope to future students that they will be able to find a job in their chosen profession. The other part is what we do with those individuals who are on the Employment Bureau's register and who have elementary or high school education, and nearly 80% of the unemployed fall into this category, to see how we can retrain them in line with labor market requirements. We have also noticed that, for example, the regions of Skopje, Bitola, and Prilep have a huge shortage of workers. This is not the case for the Polog region, where we have a greater supply than demand for labor for all professions, indicating potential for the gray economy. Therefore, all these analyses show us that we need measures that will be adapted to the region, sometimes even to the municipality itself," Petreski concludes.