VMRO-DPMNE President Hristijan Mickoski pointed to the dismal results of Government infrastructure spending in 2019 as one of the reasons why Zoran Zaev is trying to postpone the elections and avoid facing the public. Less than half of the planned infrastructure spending was completed in 2019. Despite the fact that the budget contains specific projects with provided funding, in the first 11 months of 2019 barely 49 percent of the funds were actually spent, with correspondingly low levels of actual work being done on the ground.

This level of infrastructure spending is shameful. It reveals this Government as utterly incompetent. In July Zaev promised he will have 80 percent implementation of infrastructure funding. It’s at 49 percent, and after the budget was slimmed down. And yet our public debt has reached the astronomical level of 5.7 billion EUR and new bond issues worth 270 million EUR are being planned, Mickoski said.

Under the previous, VMRO-DPMNE led Government, major public infrastructure projects were seen as one of the main drivers of the economy. Zaev’s Government has struggled to complete largely finished highways left by VMRO, and has invited ridicule when it announced it will add pay toll booths as its contribution to the projects.

This is why Zaev is running away from the elections. He can’t hide his incompetence. We will not let him get away with it. Today we see some polls meant to boost his SDSM activists. Fine, if the polls are correct, let’s go to the polls. I encourage them to go to the people and let them decide, Mickoski said.