Four budgets in ten months: the second revision cuts investment, Uzunov calls it "cheap, childish budget gymnastics"

A 2026 budget voted through at the end of last year. A first revision in July. A second revision now, already before Parliament, just three months later. And in about ten days the government is legally required to submit the 2027 budget too. "In 10 months we practically have four budgets," calculates economic journalist Mirche Jovanovski, adding that another reallocation could still come before the year is out.

The second revision cuts both revenue and spending by around 86 million euros each. The deficit doesn't move - it stays at 750 million euros, or 4.1 percent of GDP. The cuts land where cutting is easiest: capital investment. Exactly how much depends on who is counting - around 90 million euros if you look only at the capital expenditure line, around 103 million if you include the KAPEF fund. Either way, the direction is the same. In July, the higher deficit was justified by more investment. Now the investment is falling and the deficit stays.

The minister's explanation

Finance Minister Gordana Dimitrieska-Kochoska says excise revenue is 60 million euros lower because of the government's own cuts to fuel excise duties, and that the revision simply aligns projections with real economic trends under pressure from global tensions. The ministry also points to slower delivery of some capital projects and insists infrastructure investment is continuing.

Professor Vancho Uzunov isn't buying it. In his view, it is not possible that in June nobody knew what would be spent by October, or that this much capital investment wasn't going to happen. The problem, he says, is political rhetoric in which "capital investment" means development and roads with no connection to reality. Now the minister has to show investment and keep pensioners and social benefits paid at the same time, the money doesn't stretch that far - so she has to perform what he called "cheap, childish budget gymnastics".

Growth is still projected at 3.5 percent, inflation at 3.8. Around 6.1 billion euros is supposed to come into the treasury, and more than 6.84 billion to go out. When a budget changes every three months, the document stops being a plan and turns into a diary of what has already happened. If the year's fourth budget arrives in ten days, how long will it last before the fifth?