Minister of Foreign Affairs of Republic of Macedonia, Stevo Crvenkovski, ended the first official visit to Russia yesterday, which in the circles of both countries was estimated as successful.
Ministers Andrey Kozirev and Stevo Crvenkovski, after yesterday's meeting in Moscow, signed an Agreement for cultural cooperation between the two countries, as well as a Protocol for cooperation between the ministries of foreign affairs.
Chief of the Macedonian diplomatic core, yesterday, coming back from Moscow had meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, Georgi Pirinski.
Macedonia and Egypt will sign an agreement for widening the cultural cooperation. This is arranged at the meeting of the Ministers of Culture, Faruk Hosni and Eshtref Aliu, the later staying on a several-day visit in the Arabic State of Egypt.
Minister of Culture of Republic of Macedonia, Eshtref Aliu invited the Egyptian Minister of Culture to visit Macedonia.
Today the Spokesman of the Macedonian Government Gjuner Ismail announced a list of eight new high government officials dismissed from their positions. Ismail explained that "the Government despites the pressures will not yield from this action" and will continue to dismiss the government officials because of the not satisfying results in their work.
From their positions dismissed are: Bogdan Karanfilovski (Ministry of City Planning), Mile Veljanovski (Telecommunication), Velichko Andreevski (Labour and Social Politics), Atanas Mecev (Finances), Vladimir Kocovski (General and common services of the Government), Blagoja Taskoski (Ministry of Internal Affairs), Milica Paneva and Zivko Markovski.
Answering the question weather the ministers feel personal responsibility too for the situations in the Government, the Spokesman announced: "We are not talking in the direction of a personal responsibility of the ministers, because some of them have been on that position for only six months".
Also, Ismail explained that right now there is no word about reconstruction of the Government.
In order to overcome and help the reform processes in health, a delegation of the Ministry of Health, headed by Minister Ilija Filipche, on the invitation of the World Bank, last week was staying in Washington, it was officially reported.
Minister Filipche, with his co-workers, presented the reform projection of the Government in the field of health to the adequate team of the World Bank. After the presentation, individual members of the team of the World Bank and representatives of individual governments expressed complete support of the Government's moves, i.e. of the Ministry of health, so that way the first reaction is the participation of the Japanese Government with US$ 600,000, and also the support in front of the Executive Board of the World Bank of the requested sum of aid of US$ 7 million, a sum which would be provided in the second half-term of this year.
Otherwise, the World Bank, already stated its attitude to help the Macedonian programmes for helping mothers and children, family planning, prevention from tuberculosis and AIDS.
At these talks special attention was paid to the questions of funding and managing the pharmaceutical section. The obligation of the Ministry of Health to prepare the programme for implementing the reforms of 1999 resulted from these talks, after which the expertise and an adequate financial aid of the World Bank would follow for the stated period.
During the visit to Washington, the delegation had talks in the State Department, which resulted in an agreement for financial support by the USA, consisting of US$ 400,000, for educating the highly specialized personnel and aid in medical equipment.
The delegation realized a visit to the Fogarthy International Research Center (FIRCA), an institution through which the scholarships for education of the medical personnel from Republic of Macedonia will be realized, while visited was also Project Hope - humanitarian association which would help our country with deficit medicines and equipment. With the Ministry of Health of USA, an exchange of information, experts in the sphere of registration of medicines, in putting medicines and food on sale, was arranged, which would contribute for tighter standardizing of this problem in the Republic of Macedonia.
It is estimated in the Ministry of Health that the results of this visit will be of enormous use to the support of the reforms of the total system of the health insurance in RM, was stated in yesterday's report of the Ministry of Information at the Government of Macedonia.
President of Republic of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov, in the occasion of 2-d of August - national holiday of the Macedonian people, granted amnesty to 41 convicts. Nine of them were granted complete amnesty, and 32 are partially relieved of the further doing of the sentenced term, was said in the report of the President's Office.
Government of Macedonia at its last session made a decision to issue 550 million denars (US$ 15 million) to 12,000 government bonds, which will be released on the 1st of October, this year.
The bonds will be in denomination of 10,000 Macedonian denars (US$ 272.5), 50,000 (US$ 1,362), and 100,000 (US$ 2,724), and the same will be issued as short-termed value bonds with an interest rate of 22% a year, according to the discount method on the day of the sale. That means that the bond in denomination of 10,000 Macedonian denars on the day of the sale will be sold with a price of 8,325.40 denars (US$ 226.9), the bond worth 50,000 denars will be sold for 41,626.90 denars (US$ 1,134.2) and the bond of 100,000 denars will be sold for 83,253.70 denars (US$ 2,268.5), so that after 10 months the owner can get the whole sum.
Government bonds will accessible to buy for the banks, enterprises and citizens. Buying them the owner will access a right to sell them, to use them as a cover in the retail relations or as a lien in the loan relations with the banks, as well as to charge them from the state's budget on the day of their receive.
It is expected that their selling will realize budget influx of 455,895,700 denars (US$ 12,422,226), and the government's safe should pay 95,104,300 (US$ 2,591,397) in the name of the interest rate which will be placed in the budget for the next year.
According to the Assistant Minister from the Ministry of Finances, Dragoljub Arsovski, the Government will use these means for the purchase of the wheat from this year's crop.
From the previous privatization, on the account of the Privatization Agency, there are DEM 30 million in Macedonia, from which only DEM 16 million in cash, and the rest of them in the captivated saving accounts of the citizens.
According to Mr. Evgenij Zografski, deputy director of the Agency, in the last several months there is exclusively small influx of cash money. That, according to him, is a result of the possibility adopted in the Privatization Statute, contributions from the wages of the employees to be paid off in captivated foreign currencies in case of a privatization in accordance to the old law of the last Prime Minister, Ante Markovic.
Actually, if some enterprise has started the privatization in accordance to this law, but the percentage of the privatized things is not real, but it's smaller, so that after the control by the Office of public revenues, the percentage of the privatization of the enterprise can be as big as the enterprise demands it to be, it will have to pay some additional means. These additional deposits are conducted in captivated foreign currencies.
The means in cash, collected from the privatization, about DEM 16 million are spent on the Government's social politics, or to be more exact, on the payment of the wages in the Skopje's Steel Plant, FAS "11 Oktomvri" and others in order to prevent the social problems and the possible strikes.
According to the estimates made about the 366 elaborated subjects till now, till the year 2000 there should be collected about DEM 295 million with balanced dynamics of receiving. But, the Agency has received 490 subjects till now, till the end of the summer it is expected for that figure to reach 600 subjects, while 200 enterprises should be estimated their values by the Agency and it should offer them for sale.
The yearly working of the Agency, without some extraordinary expanses costs 65 million Macedonian denars (US$ 1.77 million).