Two hundred and forty-two million euros of completed construction work in three months. That is the figure deputy prime minister and transport minister Aleksandar Nikoloski announced for the second quarter of this year, calling the roughly 22 per cent growth the highest quarter on record.

"Every quarter is far, far above what used to be the average. This is the historically highest quarter, the highest three-month period," Nikoloski said in Kumanovo, where he attended the handover of new municipal vehicles procured with World Bank support.

He stressed that this is not an isolated result: "In 2024 we laid the foundations, we set up the projects, and from 2025 we are already seeing strong development in construction." And he concluded: "Construction really is becoming the main engine of the economy and we will continue doing that in the coming period."

Engine or prop?

The figure is real and should not be relativised - 242 million euros of work realised in a single quarter is substantial activity in an economy the size of Macedonia's. The problem with the phrase "main engine of the economy" is a different one.

Construction is an engine when it grows because private capital finds it profitable to build. It is a prop when it grows because the state has several large infrastructure fronts open at once. Nikoloski points to the second mechanism himself - the growth is the result of projects set up in 2024, meaning public capital investment.

The distinction matters because the second type of growth has an expiry date. When the road sections are finished, the curve falls, unless something else is holding it up by then.

What is worth checking later

The figure for work realised is a figure about money moving, not about finished structures. With capital projects, those two things need not coincide in the same quarter.

Nikoloski says many more projects will follow that will mean serious growth for construction and, with it, for gross domestic product. That is true in both directions - the same logic runs the other way once the projects are exhausted.

The record quarter is a record. The question with no answer today is what the quarter will show when five motorway sections are no longer being built simultaneously.