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In two years, only 43 companies founded in North Macedonia with 1€ capital, the announced “Macedonian Startup Village” nowhere to be found

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Two years after the Draft law for the amendment of the Law on Trading Companies was filed by the Ministry of Economy of North Macedonia and one year since it was enacted, the opportunity to found a trading company in North Macedonia with the founding capital of just €1 seems to be cast aside by the young people, but also by the potential entrepreneurs from other age groups.

The idea behind this new category of a trading company i.e. the opportunity to create a Simplified Limited Liability Company (SLLC), according to the current Minister of Economy, Kreshnik Bekteshi was to provide an opportunity for any citizen that has a business idea to encourage to start own trading company with investment capital of €1.

According to the information that Meta.mk got from the Central Registry of North Macedonia, from September 2021, when this draft law was voted in and enacted, so far only 43 SLLC companies have been registered.

Dejan Aleksov, the president of “Startup Macedonia”, who was also part of the National Startup Council that was working on the draft measures for accelerated growth of the Macedonian startup ecosystem, says that the low interest is due to its relative novelty.

Apart from the introduction of the SLLC, at the press conference in September 2020, the Ministry of Economy mentioned the previously announced “Macedonian Village” project in Nerezi that was supposed to become a startup village, where young people from the country and abroad could have an opportunity to start businesses without paying for the utilities At the time it was announced that the plan for the project would be started within the next four years.

Meta.mk sent questions on the subject to the Ministry of Economy but received no reply by the time of publication.

One of the measures that the National Startup Council drafted and was enclosed in the draft law by the Ministry of Economy and enacted in April is the opportunity for a convertible loan. It’s a legal mechanism that will allow the investors to invest their assets in startup companies without entering the ownership structure.

“By utilizing this mechanism, the investors will be able to, in the later phase of the development, decide whether to enter the ownership structure through loan’s conversion into a stake and to gain a share of the company,” explains the attorney and the president of “Startup Macedonia”, Dejan Aleksov.

He says that startup companies have a high potential for rapid growth and that is what attracts investors, but it can happen often that the startup company fails. Therefore, the process of attracting foreign investors to North Macedonia by the opportunity of a convertible loan, can significantly accelerate the growth of the Macedonian startup eco-system.

:In Macedonia there is a potential for the development of this mechanism because lately there has been huge interest and increase of the number of individual investors or investors organized in clubs to invest in startups,” Aleksov stresses.

He says that the young and the others that have innovative ideas, by combining the two latest amendments of the Law on Trading Companies – for founding a SLLC and a convertible loan, can found their company without a starting capital and later seek investors for help in developing their ideas.

“It is expected that this can encourage the potential entrepreneurs who due to financial hardship maybe still haven’t started working on accomplishing their ideas,” Aleksov notes.

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