Welcome to the Winter 2017 edition of AmCham Magazine. I hope you’ll benefit from our coverage of Macedonia’s progress and remaining challenges related to consumer protection. Consumer groups and companies generally agree that Macedonia’s current legal and institutional framework meant to protect consumers is sorely in need of improvement. After hosting a roundtable on this topic last spring, we additionally gathered conclusions from a number of companies in the retail and telecommunications segment active in our Fair Competition committee and will call this year for the Ministry of Economy to begin addressing them. It is clear that the relevant laws need to be thoroughly reviewed and improved with thorough engagement from companies, but more importantly, enforcement bodies must also be equipped with the training, funding and tools required to effectively do their jobs. Given a very busy fall-winter season, we’ve also provided coverage of a number of our recent events in this issue, including our 16th Annual General Assembly, speaker program with Bett Mickels, our traditional Thanksgiving and holiday party. We plan to kick off the 2017 AmCham events calendar with a Member-to-Member Learning event where winners of National CSR Awards for 2015 programs will share details on their award-winning programs with their peers in other companies. We’ll also continue collecting member feedback on key economic laws to call for Macedonia’s new government to increase sincere dialogue with companies on the laws that impact them most.
Looking forward to our successful cooperation in 2017, Michelle Osmanli