Prof. Trajko Slaveski was elected as the new governor of the National Bank. When taking his oath, he stated the National Bank will remain independent and focus on stability.
Born 1960, he studied at the Faculty of Economics at UKIM, at the California State University in Chico, USA and held a Fulbright Scholarship at Harvard University. He was a Visiting Professor at the Arizona State University in 1997. He managed government projects such as: The Medium Term Strategy for Development and Reforms “Macedonia 2003” (2000); the National Poverty Reduction Strategy (2002); the Pre-Accession Economic Program (2008 and 2009); the National Development Plan (2009) etc. In 1992, he co-authored the Anti-Inflation Program in preparation of the monetary independence. He was Minister of Development in 1999-2000 and Minister of Finance 2006 – 2009. Up to his election, he was professor at the faculty of Economics at UKIM and was President of the Executive board of the Association for Modern Economics.
“The central bank should focus on three goals only: keeping inflation and prices down, maintaining financial stability and supporting the government’s policies. Price stability would mean a low and stable inflation and financial stability”
Major changes like the simplification of the personal income tax, abolishing deductions and achieving a low tax rate, the replacement of the net salary with the gross salary principle and the replacement of the Yugoslav sales tax with EU-style VAT, happened during this tenure.
“The World Bank and other central banks have widened their competences and interests to include social issues such as green energy. I think this should be left to other institutions to deal with and the central bank should focus on its three primary goals”
Slaveski was Vice president of VMRO and President of the City council of Skopje.
He authored or co-authored many articles and books, dealing with Foreign Direct Investments, economic transition and economic growth. In 2021 he co-authored the book “Left-Right: The Economy through Two Perspectives” with his colleague and predecessor in the Ministry of Finance, Prof. Nikola Popovski, member of SDSM. The book was initiated by Zoran Jovanovski.
“On the pages of this work, Popovski and Slaveski debate twenty important theoretical or practical economic issues and problems. A careful reading will show many similarities in understandings, but also important differences. By co-authoring this work, the famous university professors are breaking through some visible or invisible barriers in society”
The book shows that the representatives of the opposing large parties with high economic competence, the differences are far smaller than the daily political quarrel might pretend to show.
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