Measuring Support to Agriculture in a Transition Economy in the Southern Balkans: The case of FYR Macedonia

As a candidate country to the EU and a member of the WTO there is a need for a comprehensive, transparent and internationally comparable assessment of the support to agriculture in Macedonia. OECD that has been measuring support to agriculture on a yearly basis, in its member countries as well as some other countries since the mid-1980s, offers a good tool for such a task. The method is known for its most important indicator, the Producer Support Estimate (PSE). Using this method, data on Macedonian agricultural policy measures, in place – partly or entirely - for the period 1999 to 2004, have been gathered and categorized in order to arrive at an estimate of the level of support.