The Minister of Digital Transformation, Stefan Andonovski, during his appearance on the programme “For or Against” on Alfa Television, spoke about the current project that the Ministry of Digital Transformation is leading in cooperation with other institutions, where he emphasized that around 40,000 students received their voucher worth 15,300 denars in the first week of the call, and reminded that 55,000 vouchers for electronic devices are planned for students enrolled in undergraduate studies in the 2025/26 academic year.
Andonovski emphasized that this is one of the most important projects that the ministry, in cooperation with the General Secretariat of the Government and the Ministry of Education and Science, has implemented, and which aims to overcome the digital divide in society, thereby ensuring that every student has access to an electronic device.
“This is one of the most significant projects concerning the overcoming of the digital divide, there is often talk about how much society is progressing in digitalization, while the other part lags behind. This is because some people do not have access to electronic devices. And this idea of Prime minister Mickoski has been realised by the Government, the Government Secretariat with the portal uslugi.gov.mk, which we manage as a ministry and is quite successful. The goal is to achieve 55,000 undergraduate students receiving vouchers for electronic devices,'' explained Minister Andonovski.
Regarding how the process is unfolding, the Minister highlighted that this measure is one of the most popular initiatives undertaken so far in the area of digitalization.
"According to the data, just under 40,000 applications have already been successful, 40,000 students have received their vouchers, and they can use them in stores. It is indeed a challenging process; I can say that on the first day we had around 15,000 applications just that day, which compared to 2023 surpasses the number of annual applications on the portal, meaning the portal at one point had never seen such a high volume of applications, demonstrating the interest of citizens and students to apply, the faith in the institutions that they will receive a voucher," emphasised Andonovski.
The deadline for students to apply for vouchers, as stated by the minister, is until 20th December 2025, but with this pace, Andonovski believes that the vouchers will be distributed by the first week of December. He also noted that the utilisation of the vouchers will be valid until 31st December 2025.
"This measure is a very successful initiative, and this approach is indeed the right one. To offer people the opportunity to secure for themselves, for their families, an electronic device for learning or work, and then to enable businesses to thrive because these vouchers can be used anywhere across the country with any economic operator that applied previously, which includes 15 practically renowned providers, thus creating a chance for economic stimulation. We did not conduct procurement, we did not corrupt the system to choose what kind of electronic device they should use, but rather left it to be in the interest of the students," concluded Andonovski.
