Outsource Bulgaria

This week’s article in Capital (Bulgaira’s leading business weekly) analyzes Macedonia’s efforts to attract foreign investments, specifically in the high tech area.

The Macedonian government has announced five high tech parks (following on  Vietnam’s success), the only operational is the one next to the capital Skopje.

These are the advantages offered by Macedonia:

• No VAT
• No import taxes
• No corporate tax for 10 years
• No (local) government taxes

As of today, a full six million euro need to be invested in terms of infrastructure by the government in order to make the first tech park fully functional. There has been some investor interest already but the only company that has committed to building a small manufacturing facility is Johnson Controls.

Compared to its neighbors, Macedonia’s IT industry is very small (the smallest in Eastern Europe). The turnaround is about 80 million euro with about 2,000 people directly employed. Romania and Bulgaria remain the preferred locations for call centers or IT centers.