I often do. But the ignorance of the West regarding this area is no less deserving of a similar treatment. Let us take Macedonia. Not long ago a terra incognita on the fringes of an ever-solidifying Europe. Macedonia is the subject of many misperceptions and wrong data.
Most people assume the Macedonian market to cover no more than two million consumers.
But the truth is that through its well developed and growing system of symmetrical and asymmetrical array of free-trade agreements Macedonia provides access to well over 60 million consumers in the region from Turkey to Slovenia. Macedonia's largest trading partners are the former republics of Yugoslavia and especially the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Macedonia's biggest market by far almost 60 percent of its trading volume, both exports and imports is the European Union. Such a figure can be found in the CIA Fact-Book 1999. But this is a wrong datum. Macedonia's GDP per capita in 1998 was USD 1865 per capita.