A governmental delegation, led by Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, presented Wednesday in the Hague the favorable opportunities for investing in Macedonia.

The delegation also included the Minister for attracting foreign investments, Jerry Naumoff, and the Director of the Agency for Foreign Investments, Kliment Sekerovski.

Today's business forum is organized in cooperation with the Dutch Council for Trade Promotion (NCH) and World Trade Center branch. 

Advancing of the business climate and opening jobs are among the Government's priorities, Gruevski told the gathering. For the realization of these objectives the Government has conducted numerous reforms, being also recognized by the World Bank that ranked Macedonia in the group of 30 top doing business destinations worldwide, he said. For the last seven years, four WB Doing Business report has ranked Macedonia among the 10 best global reformers, he added.

"The World Bank ranked Macedonia as third best in terms of starting a business, 21st for protecting investments and second in regard to simple tax paying procedures," Gruevski said.

In order to overcome the small market handicap, the country has signed free trade agreements with all European countries and now companies coming to Macedonia may work for and sale their products on a 660 million - market, the PM said.

"Large companies, such as Johnson Controls, Johnson Matthey, Amphenol, Van Hool, Kromberg & Schubert, Dräxlmaier and many others have already take advantage of these favorable conditions for investing," Gruevski said. He invited Dutch businessmen to visit Macedonia and get familiar with the experiences of the companies already present in the country.

Thanking to the government's support the number of Dutch tourists visiting the country has been ten-folded, TUI Nederland Director for Macedonia said at the forum. TUI Nederland is part of the TUI Travel, a leading tour operator in Europe, working in 180 countries and servicing over 30 million tourists worldwide.

Iwan van der Knaap, Director of Dutch 'Anthura', said he was pleased to announce that the company's factory in Macedonia would be officially opened on May 6.

At the forum sidelines a memo of cooperation was signed with the Dutch Agency PUM as part of the Government project for engaging foreign experts for the needs of domestic companies.