The Kovacevski Government is preparing to introduce amendments to the 2022 budget that will include further cuts to infrastructure spending and will move forward with adding 600 million EUR to the debt. Prime Minister Kovacevski acknowledged today that the debt will rise as share of GDP in 2022, despite previous optimistic announcements.

According to the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party, this will be the peak after which Macedonia’s economic fortunes go downhill.

The Government has disastrous results in handling the crises. In 2020 we had deep recession with 6.1 percent drop in GDP. We recovered in 2021 with 4 percent growth, which was still the worst result in the region. 2022 will be a year of stagflation – low growth coupled with inflation. We lost 28,000 jobs in the private sector since the pandemic started, and added 14,300 in the public sector. Implementation of capital investments is exceptionally low, with no construction in the country. There are no direct foreign investments, or a strategy to bring them into the country – we are last in the region in this regard. Inflation is slashing livign standards and now we are adding to the debt, the party said.

VMRO-DPMNE warns that with the new loans totaling 600 million EUR, total bond issues by the Government will amount to 2.5 billion EUR – double the share that was issued over 10 years by the VMRO-DPMNE led Government.