Cover Story
Fall 2016 / Issue 51
Recycling as Competitive Advantage
T
he future of the successful restaurants
and cafes is not only in the quality of
service they offer, but also their ability
to act responsibly toward their communities, including local clients, suppliers and the natural environment. This requires
a developed level of ecological awareness and
modern waste management systems, both of
which are largely lacking in Macedonia.
In recognition of this fact, Pakomak, a company for packaging management and waste,
began an eco- initiative in 2014 called, “Are You
Recycling?” to motivate food service providers
Wait, wait…What!?
Author: : Iko Brdaroski,
Sales and Marketing
Manager
to regularly select and collect
glass bottles in special recycling
bins. The initiative also involved
eco-messaging targeting the general public in participating facilities,
to motivate them to sort and recycle their waste toward creating a
cleaner environment.
This initiative proved particularly
successful and meaningful in both
years. Starting with just 15 coffee
shops and restaurants, the initiative now involves over 280 facilities who collectively recycle over
60 tons of glass (roughly 200,000
bottles) each month. And the campaign isn’t over yet! The number of
participating facilities grows daily.
Additionally, most of participating companies also have modern
gas grills that enable simple collection of used cooking oil from deepfat fryers for proper disposal by
specialized companies, rather than
dumping it in drains and polluting
precious groundwater.
With this initiative, Pakomak
has proven that eco-awareness
doesn’t have to interrupt business operations, but can actually
enhance them.
- Tipping Your Waiter is Illegal
A new column where we highlight some of the irrational or even
absurd aspects of Macedonia’s business environment.
O
ne of the wonderful things about visiting and living in Macedonia is the
wonderful and relatively inexpensive
restaurant services. So, many visitors are surprised when they are told
tipping food service staff is generally discouraged or minimized. This
is because, in order for tips to be legal, restaurants
would need to issue a separate “fiscal receipt” to the
customer for the tip amount and pay the corresponding taxes on that amount. However, this is never done.
Do local waiters and restauranteurs just love evading taxes? Or is there something else at work here?
In a recent article published in Dnevnik, the author
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explains that waiters handle this problem by hiding their
tips during the workday, since excess cash in the cash
register is cause for inspectors to issue hefty fines and
even close the restaurant for a certain period.
The Public Revenue Office seems to have focused
heavily on punishing companies’ failure to process all
cash through approved cash registers since at lea st
2012 (€932,509 in fines issued), 2013 (€1.228 million),
2014 (€913,845) and 2015 (€469,498).
Tipping is a fact of life virtually everywhere in the
world. Perhaps local authorities should consider a
way to encourage tipping for good service and facilitate payment of related taxes instead of pretending it
doesn’t exist.
Analysis
Fall 2016 / Issue 51
Macedonia’s Stubborn Unemployment Rate
Employment struggles to reach pre-crisis levels
A
recent World Bank regional economic report provided
since the 2008 global economic crisis, it remains
third-highest in the region in both long-term unemployment and forecasted unemployment for this year. the
following view of unemployment in Macedonia within the context
of its peers in the region. While Macedonia is a clear leader in
terms of the employment growth
In an attempt to change this trend, the government has introduced a number of employment incentive programs aimed primarily at reducing employers’ contributions for compulsory social
insurance and even payment of personal income tax when hiring
unemployed people from a number of traditionally vulnerable
social groups. The most notable of these programs, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy-led program called, “Macedonia
Employs,” was reported to have created 19,000 jobs in 10,140
companies from its beginning in April 2015 through June 2016.
The following AmCham analysis of National Employment Agency
data shows the official total number of employment registrations
filed over the past 12 years. It is important to note that these
data include all registrations filed, regardless of whether they
had an impact on unemployment. This is because a single person employed on consecutive 1 month contracts by the same
employer throughout the year would raise the number of employment registrations by 12 for that year while failing to reduce official unemployment whatsoever.
Source of above graphics: Figures 2.1 and 2.2 from the
World Bank Southeast Europe Regular Economic Report
#10; page 6 available at:
Source: National Employment Agency of Macedonia reports on “Employment
Registration Trends” available at http://avrm.gov.mk/registrirani-prijavi-za-zasnovani-rabotni-odnosi.nspx. Visual presentation: AmCham Macedonia.
While these standard reports do not tell us what percentage of
each year’s registrations are “repeat customers”, they do offer
insight in the type of jobs being created year over year; namely,
temporary or seasonal jobs made up a majority of those created
from 2006-2015 as shown in the graphic on the left.
It is also important to note that these National Employment
Agency data on employment registrations do not differentiate
between public and private sector hiring.
* Source: http://www.mtsp.gov.mk/makedonija-vrabotuva.nspx
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