Macedonia

Macedonia is a new business haven in Europe. I was just reading today's issue of the Financial Times (FT) newspaper and I see their special segment today on the nation. There have been many special incentives offered to foreign investors, such as no corporate tax for ten years and ten percent thereafter. No personal income tax for five years and only five percent therafter. These rates are even lower than Hong Kong! Even more, there is no Value Added Tax (VAT) or custom duties for export production. They are even offering free connection to utilties like water/sewer, electricity and natural gas. Infrastructure there is decent as well with international airport, railroads and roads all built out. Leading multinational companies can get up to 500,000 euros for training staff and building facilities. Concessionary land leases are offered for up to 75 years.

Macedonia also has Free Trade Agreements with 27 European Union (EU) nations and 13 other European countries, with a total of 650 million customers. Average gross salary is only 370 euros a month, a lot more affordable compared to Western Europe. Macedonia is also quite economically stable as shown in the past five years, with inflation under two percent.

Best of all, benefits for businesses only take 10 days to approve and businesses can be registered in 2 days. Yet, all of these benefits seems too good to be true. If one were to open a small business, I don't see how all these benefits would be provided to them. The target seems to be large multinational companies like Microsoft or Glaxo Smith Kline.