North Macedonia

Under the WB EDIF platform, the North Macedonia first received financing via the equity funds ENIF and ENEF.  ENIF’s five investments are in Letz, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered app to boost productivity in the work place, Cognism, an end-to-end sales-acceleration solution that provides sales organizations with a more efficient way to prospect,  InPlayer: the next generation video and digital asset monetization platform that works with the largest media and technology companies in the world, CustomSell: a solution helping eCommerce merchants to increase revenue by creating automated marketing campaigns and offering automated “marketing skills”, strengthening their marketing teams and NETi: a search engine filtering algorithm for safer internet browsing, and mobile and e-mail security for businesses.

ENEF made two investments into Cermant – a leading ice cream produce and other frozen goods in North Macedonia and the second one into Markprogres: one of North Macedonia’s major confectioners, specialising in a wide assortment of sweets, snacks, grains and health food.

More recently North Macedonia has seen a speedy uptake in the absorption of the Guarantee Facility whereby EIF signed a agreement with ProCredit North Macedonia in 2016.

On the Support Services side:

• The EBRD’s Advice for Small Businesses (ASB) has provided advisory support to 83 projects in total, helping SMEs in North Macedonia to grow, enhance competitiveness and bankability. These companies also include one of those funded under ENEF, showing the advantageous synergies between the WB EDIF programmes and instrumets
• Led by the OECD, the Small Business Act (SBA) assessment supported North Macedonia in improving SME policy making and enhancing the capacity of its policy makers in addressing related challenges,
• A candidate for Centre of Excellence status under EIB’s study on Regional Centres of Excellence was identified in the INNOFEIT initiative of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Mehodius University Skopje,
• An IP Toolkit was distributed to participants of the Workshop held in Skopje under the programme lead by EIB for support on intangible assets and intellectual property in the Western Balkans
• The World Bank Investment Readiness Programme through its “PowerUp: Capacity Building for Early Stage Firms in the Western Balkans” programme supported several companies.