The government by establishing IT zones is expected to create several thousand jobs for IT engineers in the coming years, PM Nikola Gruevski stated on Monday.

Under the law on free IT zones, adopted recently by the government, IT companies will be allowed to invest in these zones, use their benefits and open new jobs.

According to Gruevski, contacts have been established with several companies from abroad that have shown interest to invest in Macedonia as soon as the law enters into force.

“The objective is to attract IT companies to invest and create jobs in Macedonia,” he said adding they would be exempted from paying profit tax and personal income tax in the first ten years and would be offered to take a long-term lease of a land unless they wanted to build their own plants.

Given the fact that IT companies rarely decide to build their own plants, instead they opt to rent, it is likely that the state institution in charge of managing the industrial zones will build an administrative facility in order to be rented to interested companies, Gruevski elaborated.

“The establishment of IT zones is an important project, whose implementation will start as soon as the law is passed in Parliament,” the Macedonian Premier stated.