One hundred and twenty-six denars for a kilogram of bread. That is the price at which the Pelagonija student dormitory in Skopje was buying bread in 2025, in a period when the market price was around 70 denars a kilogram.

Nearly double. For bread. For students.

The State Audit Office has published its audit of the dormitory's operations, and the finding is not one irregularity but a whole run of them. The auditors judge that the procurement points to uneconomical use of public funds and to weaknesses in the control of public procurement - which is the auditor's way of saying that somebody was not looking, or was looking the other way.

The trick with the loaf

The most interesting detail is not the price itself, but how it was arrived at. In 2023-2024, bread was contracted at 57.46 denars per kilogram. But the invoicing worked on the principle that one loaf equals one kilogram. If a loaf weighs less than a kilogram - and bread usually does - somebody was pocketing the difference.

The auditors established that the dormitory also operated without the mandatory bank guarantees, and signed contracts with suppliers whose core business is not food supply at all.

Two hundred and fifty mattresses nobody ever saw

Two hundred and fifty mattresses were purchased, worth 1.174 million denars. With dimensions different from those in the technical specification. Without proper receipt documentation. And as of the audit - never put into use at all.

From the same supplier, another 450 mattresses had been procured earlier, even though the existing ones were, according to the auditors, in good condition. An additional problem: the beds were smaller than the mattresses, which undermined their stability.

Seven hundred mattresses from one supplier, bought on top of perfectly good mattresses, in dimensions that do not fit the beds. This is no longer a weakness in control.

21 million denars of equipment that does not exist in the books

Equipment worth 21.563 million denars was not recorded in the dormitory's registry. For part of the kitchen equipment, paid for by the responsible ministry, the auditors could not satisfy themselves that it had ever been received at the dormitory.

Not that it is broken. Not that it is old. That they cannot confirm it arrived.

The findings continue into the procurement of fresh meat, meat products, fish and agricultural produce. In several procedures only a single bid came in. Contracts were concluded up to the full estimated value, with no quantities specified in advance. For products bought regularly, the quoted prices were above market rates - while for items that were practically never ordered, the prices were unrealistically low. That is an old and well-known mechanism: a low price where nothing gets bought, a high price where something gets bought every day.

The auditors also established cases in which the contracted values were exceeded.

A student dormitory exists so that students can survive in Skopje on minimal money. Every denar above the market price of bread is a denar taken from exactly that budget. And while the findings get published, the question no audit report can answer stays the same: who is going to answer for it?