Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski announced on Sitel television that Macedonian air traffic is breaking records: the Skopje and Ohrid airports will go from around two million passengers a year to four million this year.

"When we were elected, only two years ago, the two airports had somewhere around two million passengers, this year we will pass four", Nikoloski said. He credited "an exceptionally wise policy" - subsidies, but also the general way both airports are run.

Doubling in two years is a real number and nobody should take it away from him. The question is what exactly it measures. An airport passenger is a person departing or arriving - and in the Macedonian case it matters a great deal which of the two makes up the bigger share. The growth of low-cost flights doubles passengers just as effectively when people are coming on holiday as when they are leaving for work.

Nikoloski also pointed out that a lot is currently being invested in Ohrid airport and promised "very good news very soon". This approach to running the airports, he said, has been recognised by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation - Eurocontrol, whose regional meeting for Southeast Europe was recently held in Skopje.

Hosting a regional meeting is recognition for the navigation service, not for the number of tickets sold. Those are two different things that slide easily into one within a single statement.

What is missing from the statement is the breakdown. Four million passengers is the sum of two airports in both directions, and that figure contains transit, tourism, business travel and everything else. If the policy is that wise, the itemised statistics would demonstrate it far more convincingly than one rounded figure on television.