Twenty percent of people born in the Western Balkans live abroad, which reduces the potential for growth of the economies in the region. “Human capital is a prerequisite for achieving sustainable and inclusive economic growth, while migration is one of the factors affecting human capital.
“Taking into account that a third of the emigration in the region is with higher education, the potential for growth of the economies decreases and the low convergence of the income, which is only 40% of the European income, slows down. Policy makers cannot prevent emigration completely, but they can mitigate the negative consequences,” said the governor of the National Bank, Anita Angelovska-Bezhoska, at the panel discussion “Migrations, refugees and societies”, within the Dutch-Belgian constituency of the IMF and the World Bank, held in Montenegro.
