The government boasted a number that sounds impressive: 700 million euros of debt repaid ahead of schedule. Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski announced that the Ministry of Finance had paid off a Eurobond issued in 2020, and did so before its deadline - a move that, he says, saved several million euros.

„We returned 700 million euros that the previous Government borrowed in 2020, and with the early payment we saved several million,“ Mickoski said. According to him, over two years the government has serviced or restructured around 4.6 billion euros of debt - debt that, as he stressed, was for the most part created during the seven-year rule of SDSM and DUI.

And here it's worth separating the fact from the political music around it. Repaying a bond early really can save on interest - it's a well-run financial move and shouldn't be underestimated. But the sentence „the previous government created the debt“ is an old Balkan refrain: every government inherits the debts of the last one and passes its own on to the next. The credit for the repayment is real; the finger-pointing is predictable.

What the citizen really wants to know is not who borrowed, but where the money went and what's left of it. 4.6 billion euros of serviced debt in two years is an enormous figure - the question rarely asked at press conferences is how much of that money turned into roads, hospitals and jobs, and how much simply rolled from one loan into another. The millions saved are welcome; but the real bill is one we all pay, for years.