With the latest emission of state debt scheduled for Tuesday, worth 21.1 million EUR, Macedonia is on track to continue its stretch of adding significant levels of new debt into 2019.

In 2019, projections are that the public debt will grow by 600 million EUR. It has already surpassed 5 billion EUR, and continues to grow as a share of the economy – it’s expected to reach 54.7 percent of GDP in 2019.

Economists have warned over the sustainability of this path, while opposition leaders have wondered where the newly added debt is going, given that tangible spending outlays, such as infrastructure spending, are being fulfilled at mere 40 percent of annual projections. This failure to spend money already allocated for infrastructure had an extremely negative effect on the construction sector and all related branches of industry.

Newly added debt has prompted the World Bank to issue a warning that the public debt is reaching high levels and its roll-over will become a serious challenge for the future.