Supplementary Budget Revision: Revenues 374.2 Billion Denars, Expenditures 420.5 Billion, Deficit Stays at 46.3 Billion
The government adopted the supplementary 2026 budget revision. Revenues are cut by 5.3 billion, and the deficit and growth figures are not the same in all reports.
At its session on November 3 the government adopted the supplementary budget revision for 2026 and will send it to Parliament for approval. According to the Ministry of Finance statement, carried by several outlets, revenues are 374.2 billion denars, which is 5.3 billion lower than earlier projections, and expenditures are 420.5 billion denars.
How big the deficit is. The gap between expenditures and revenues is 46.3 billion denars (420.5 minus 374.2). That is the deficit that stays unchanged. How much it is as a share of gross domestic product depends on the source: the brief and Lider write 3.9 percent, and Nezavisen 4.1 percent. If 46.3 billion is 3.9 percent, GDP would be about 1,187 billion denars, and if it is 4.1 percent, about 1,129 billion (our calculation). A difference of about 58 billion denars is not small and shows that not everyone uses the same GDP base. Which is correct will be known from the bill itself.
How fast the economy grows. The figures differ here too. According to one version, the growth projection is 4.3 percent. Nezavisen writes that the growth projection is left unchanged at 3.5 percent, and on November 3 the National Bank published a projection of 3.8 percent for 2026. Three different figures for the same year are a reason not to take any of them as given before we see the explanatory memorandum of the revision.
What “reduced revenues” means. When both revenues and expenditures are cut by roughly the same amount, the deficit does not change, which usually means the state is adjusting spending to what it actually collects. The items that are easiest to postpone are usually cut first, and those are capital projects. We cannot confirm whether that is the case this time, because the breakdown by budget user and programme is not publicly available in the sources we checked.
What is missing. It is not clear which programmes lose and which gain funds in the reallocation, how much of the budget was executed by October, and whether the cut in revenues affects municipalities. We also do not know how much of capital spending was actually spent. Without these data it is hard to judge whether the cut is a routine adjustment or a sign that revenues are lagging.
Why it matters now. The revision is adopted in the same week in which the government sent the 2027 budget into parliamentary procedure. A deficit of around four percent of GDP is a level economists watch against fiscal rules and debt, and any deviation of growth from the projection directly changes VAT and payroll tax revenues.
Our angle. A simple check for the reader is to compare the three growth figures: 3.5, 3.8 and 4.3 percent. If economic growth is lower than the one on which planning is based, revenues may lag and the state would have to cut again or borrow. We cannot know whether that will happen, which is why it is important that the explanatory memorandum is published in full.
What to follow. The debate in Parliament, the publication of the breakdown by user and the data on budget execution to the end of October. In this text we use figures carried by several outlets that we have not confirmed in the Ministry’s own document, so we treat them with caution.
MKNews Hub · Macedonia · November 4, 2026
