Safeguarding the environment through the fight against climate change and air pollution in the cities throughout North Macedonia is something that exists only in theory. In reality, the data provided by the State Statistical Office – SSO show that unlike any period before, the number of Macedonian households owning a passenger vehicle last year has climbed to 66.8%.
The analysis by the statisticians shows that the number of households owning a car in 2021 has risen by 2.6% in comparison to 2020, but also by whopping 15.3% compared to the percentage of households owning a car a decade ago, in 2011.
The rising rate of motorization of the country’s population is present in all sectors. Therefore, 78.4% of the agricultural households in Macedonia have reported that in 2021 they own a car, and an identical answer was given by 63.9% of the non-agricultural households, as well as 87.8% of the mixed types of households.
Unlike the continous rise of the number of cars, the statistics shows that for a number of years back the percentage of bicycle ownership by the households in North Macedonia has been fluctuating between 30% and 40%. In 2021, 37.4% of the households in the country reported owning a bicycle, and by groups, it was biggest among the agricultural households – a whopping 49.7%.
Meta.mk has already written about the fact that the road transportation is causing almost all of the emissions of greenhouse gases in North Macedonia.
Taking into fact that the number of vehicles in the period between 2016 and 2021 had been rapidly rising, it is evident that the transport today has an even greater share in the greenhouse gas emissionse. According to the data from the Customs Administration, only in 2021, over 37,000 used cars were imported. In the past 5 years, over 160,000 used vehicles were imported in North Macedonia.
As one of the promised preventive measures against the damaging effects that cars have on theenvironment, the Macedonian government for a second year has been promising a ban on the import of vehicles below the EURO 5 standard of gas emissions, but for now, the government is silent about this issue and there is no firm date when this measure will be implemented.
