Legal basis
The legal basis for setting up, keeping and maintaining the Statistical Business Register is the Law on State Statistics (Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia, No. 54/97) and the Law on Amendments to the Law on State Statistics (Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia, No. 21/2007, 51/2011, 104/2013, 42/2014, 192/2015, 27/16, 83/18, 220/18, 31/20), as well as the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics.
Sources of data collection
The basic source of data which provides full coverage of enterprises (business entities) and their organisational units in the Statistical Business Register is the Central Register of RNM, which is responsible for the management of the Trade Register and the Register of Other Legal Entities. Besides the basic source, the State Statistical Office provides data from other additional administrative sources.
Coverage
The Statistical Business Register includes enterprises (business entities) located on the territory of the Republic of North Macedonia and their organisational units, irrespective of their size, organisational form, institutional sector, and sector of activity from the National Classification of Activities NKD Rev.2 where they are distributed by their main activities, and which previously have been registered by a competent authority.
Definitions
Enterprises (business entities) are all legal and natural persons (legal units) that perform one of the activities determined in the National Classification of Activities, located on the territory of the Republic of North Macedonia, registered by the competent authorities in accordance with the law, or established by law, as well as the organisational units of foreign trade companies and foreign sole proprietors which perform activities on the territory of the Republic of North Macedonia. Starting from 2021, methodological adjustments have been made in the Statistical Business Register in line with the new European regulation on business statistics, Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197.
According to the Regulation, from a statistical point of view, an enterprise is an organisational unit producing goods or services which has a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making. An enterprise can carry out more than one economic activity and it can be situated at more than one location. The enterprise is an entity that can correspond to the legal unit (ratio 1:1), but it can also be created by two or more legal units (ratio 1:n), in which case a complex enterprise is formed. Hence, the number of enterprises in the Statistical Business Register differs from the administrative register of business entities.
Legal persons are all forms of legal structures organised according to the regulations of the country (trade companies, institutions, associations, and other organisations), with established rights and obligations, which obtain a status of legal persons on the day of their registration in the competent register.
Natural persons are entities (independent performers of activities, craftsmen, individual farmers, sole proprietors) that have rights and obligations, and their status of legal entity is recognised based on the existing legal regulations.
Active enterprises (business entities) are all enterprises that contribute to the gross domestic product, and the basic criterion for determining the activity of the entity is the data on income and/or employees.
Main activity is the activity that has the highest share in the structure of income of the enterprise (business entity) gained by performing its activities.