With 64 votes in favour, none against and none abstaining, parliament adopted the supplementary revision of the 2026 budget. Read that result again. The opposition spent two days attacking the revision as proof of failed economic policy, and then did not cast a single vote against.

Finance Minister Gordana Dimitrieska-Kočoska presented the revision as a response to changed economic circumstances and an instrument for aligning public finances with real needs. The additional funds go towards obligations under collective agreements, agriculture, social protection, municipal needs and capital expenditure.

From the governing side, VMRO-DPMNE MP Martin Stojanovski said the money from the revision is earmarked for completing planned capital projects that benefit citizens, including motorway construction.

The number that tells the story

The deficit rises from 3.5 to 4.1 percent of gross domestic product. SDSM MP Fatmir Bitiḱi pointed out that by 23 July the deficit had already exceeded the planned annual frame, which turned the original 3.5 percent projection into, as he put it, nothing more than a political memory.

Bitiḱi also produced a figure that rarely makes the headlines: informal employment rose from 10.7 percent in 2023 to 13.3 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Which means a growing share of people who work do so without full formal protection - no contributions, no service record, no security.

On the revenue side, total budget income for January to June came to 169.9 billion denars, or 45.3 percent of the annual plan. Tax revenue accounts for 96.7 billion denars, VAT for 43.3 billion, personal income tax for 17.5 billion and corporate profit tax for 13.8 billion denars.

SDSM MP Sanja Lukarevska demanded an answer to how the GDP growth the government talks about squares with delayed agricultural subsidies, delayed assistance for vulnerable groups and, as she put it, 18 billion denars in unpaid obligations to the private sector.

So: the deficit is growing, the grey economy is growing, and the budget frame is expanding. All of it voted through without a single vote against.

A budget revision is, at its core, an admission that the original projection did not hold. That is not a scandal - budgets are projected over twelve months in a world that does not wait twelve months. The scandal would be if the next revision arrived with the same explanations and the same voting result.