The Government was spending like there was no tomorrow, adding 120 million EUR in new debt in the election year, said VMRO-DPMNE official and former Finance Minister Trajko Slaveski during his press conference today.

He pointed to the extraordinarily high levels of spending in the first three months of the year, clearly meant to buy votes for the ruling SDSM party in the run up to the early elections that were planned for April 12. The coronavirus epidemic canceled the elections but also caused an economic downturn that laid bare the spending that was going on.

A reminder that 42,6 percent of the entire deficit that was planned for 2020 was spend in the first quarter of the year. Given the new, crisis projections of our gross domestic product, the Government spent a whole 1 percent of our GDP on new debt in just one quarter – a full 120 million EUR. This merciless spending of taxpayer money is unheard of in our recent history, Slaveski said.

He pointed to the deficit spending over the past several years, here some of whom were also election years, but had about 18 percent of the planned deficit spent ijn the first quarter.

This makes it clear that we are heading for a major economic crisis. Just in March the Government spent 50 million EUR more than it collected in revenue. As Macedonia was listed in international outlets as a European country that has the smallest planned stimulus program compared to its GDP, it’s clear that the money were spent for pre-election bribery of voters. It was spent on pre-election hiring of party activists in the already overburdened public administration, and for the growing welfare transfers, Slaveski said.

The ruling SDSM party responded insisting that the economic crisis is to blame for the exploding deficit, not the Government’s overspending. “Owing to the timely and responsible policies in our economy, the country will suffer the least damage compared to other countries in the region”, SDSM replied.