Jovan Despotovski, Director of the North Macedonia Free Zones Authority
Jovan Despotovski is Director of the North Macedonia Free Zones Authority. With the new concept that he introduced in Technological Industrial Development Zones Despotovski fostered significant growth in investments and jobs in the last two years. Only in 2022 TIDZ has reached investment agreements in volume of 430 mil.euros and 2300 new jobs were created. Despotovski was previously director of Fund for Innovations and Technology Development. In his three years mandate as the director of the Fund, he has made significant change in the innovation sector in the country, developed a new concept of the state support program for SMEs that resulted in complete transformation of the economy in the country. With this new concept in three years more than 460 companies were supported and total volume of 70 million euros investment in innovation and technology development was encouraged, of which over 45% are investments of the companies themselves.
Despotovski, Bachelor in Economy and Finance, started working for the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia in 2003, as part of the Secretariat for European Affairs. He was leading the working group on Economic criteria within the process of preparing Answers to EC Questionnaire in 2004 that led to EU awarding candidate status to Macedonia. In the period 2008 – 2016 he was engaged on different EU and bilateral countries’ funded programmes on infrastructure and capacity building for state institutions. He is one of the founders of MENSA Macedonia.