The tender for 150 new electric buses is finally complete. The appeal that was holding up the process was dismissed by the second-instance public procurement appeals commission, the contract signing follows, and deputy prime minister and transport minister Aleksandar Nikoloski says the first 30 vehicles should arrive in December or January.

The rest come in instalments. Under the procurement, the next 60 buses are due within 12 months, and another 60 within 18 months. So the whole delivery finishes in a year and a half - provided not a single further step gets stuck. The contractual delivery deadline is six months from the day of signing, but Nikoloski says his own demand of the bidder is that the first buses arrive in December.

Here it is worth recalling why this news sounds familiar. Buying new buses for Skopje is a story that has run for years, with tenders, appeals, annulments and announcements. Every statement begins with the word "finally". So we start counting from December.

The city train starts on 1 September

The same day the minister announced that construction work for the city train is in its final phase and that a technical handover of the first section should take place by 21 August - from Zelenikovo via Dracevo, Lisice, Aerodrom and Kisela Voda to the railway station. The timetable will be set in coordination between the ministry, the railways, the City of Skopje and the public transport company, taking into account, as he put it, the needs of secondary school and university students. At least three train sets will operate - two electric and one diesel.

The Kicevo - Ohrid motorway, meanwhile, is due to be finished in the first quarter of 2027, and the exact month, Nikoloski says, depends on the winter: a mild one might mean January, a harsh one March, since this is mountain terrain. "We are already talking about the months when it will be finished, not years and decades," he said, announcing that on completion he will present all the facts and problems with the project from the past two years. For a motorway whose construction has dragged on for more than a decade, moving from decades to months is progress worth measuring when the ribbon is actually cut.

A theft out of a film

In the same statement the minister also addressed the theft at the Dracevo traction substation two weeks ago, with estimated damage of between three and five million euros to critical railway infrastructure. He describes an operation that requires heavy machinery: high-voltage power cut and 27-tonne transformers lifted, in order to extract the copper and sell it on the black market, since copper fetches a high price on world exchanges.

"No more than 20-30 people in the country could pull it off," Nikoloski said, adding that the Interior Ministry is investigating and that all scrap iron and metal yards are being inspected. If the circle of possible perpetrators is as narrow as the minister claims, then the question isn't who could have done it, but how long it will take.