Some pensioners received their August pensions today, ahead of the regular payment date. Stopanska Banka Skopje, Halkbank and Alta Banka Bitola made the payments, meaning their clients did not have to wait for the usual date.

Stopanska Banka said the funds would be made available during the day and could be withdrawn in cash at ATMs or used by card in shops. Clients also received an SMS with the exact date: "We inform you that your pension will be paid into your payment account on 27.08.2026."

Halkbank confirmed that August pensions are already available - at branches, at ATMs, through electronic and mobile banking, and, for those who gave prior consent, at post offices as well. Alta Banka Bitola transferred the funds to transaction accounts with immediate access at ATMs and branches.

Pensioners banking elsewhere should watch for notices from their own banks, since payment dates differ.

September brings 2.96 per cent more - and that does not mean the same for everyone

According to the latest figures from the State Statistical Office, September pensions are expected to be around three per cent higher, more precisely 2.96 per cent.

The increase is calculated by the statutory formula: half the growth in the average wage plus half the growth in the cost of living. Because the adjustment is percentage-based rather than flat, the effect depends on the size of the existing pension.

A pension of 20,000 denars gains about 600 denars. A pension of 30,000 gains about 900. A pension of 40,000 gains about 1,200 denars.

The arithmetic that rarely gets commented on

And there is the whole point of a percentage adjustment. The person with the smallest pension gets the smallest amount, and the person with the largest gets the biggest. With every adjustment, the gap between those two pensions widens rather than narrows.

Six hundred denars a month, for someone on a 20,000-denar pension, is roughly two loaves of bread a day. That is not nothing, but neither is it an answer to the price rises that the formula itself is built on.

The formula is statutory, transparent and predictable - which beats arbitrary decisions before an election. The question the formula does not solve is a different one: whether a pension of 20,000 denars is an amount to which adding percentages makes sense at all, or whether the base itself is the problem.