Immature master manipulation

The Ministry of Finance recently announced Infrastructure Investment Master Plan 2026-2030, a 55-page document that solemnly promises "acceleration of economic growth and better quality of life for citizens", which is, of course, a commendable ambition.

However, the document suffers from numerous structural shortcomings and immature recycled projects that are being obscured by cheap attempts to publicly pump up numbers that have no basis in reality.

The first problem begins on page 26, where the only indicator of the impact of the overall goal is stated, which is the real GDP growth rate. There is no doubt that the real GDP growth rate is an important indicator of the progress of our economy. The problem is that the starting value of this indicator in 2025 is 3,2 percent, the target value in 2027 is 3 percent, and the target value in 2030 is again 3 percent.

In translation: a 5,77 billion euro infrastructure plan, whose self-proclaimed goal is to grow ubrza, sets as a measurable result that growth slow down. Paradoxical, isn't it? Every citizen is probably wondering how it is possible that investments of almost 5 billion euros lead to such modest GDP growth? Something is not right!

AN AVERAGE OF 945 MILLION THAT WILL NOT BE SPENT IN ANY YEAR

The summary proudly states an average investment of “around 945 million euros or around 11 percent of GDP” per year. The average is, as usual, a manipulative (wow!) way to hide what is really happening. Because the flow by year looks like this: 525 million in 2026, 797 million in 2027, then 1,133 billion in 2028, 1,137 billion in 2029 and 1,137 billion euros in 2030.

Now, be careful: the only year that is truly binding under the Budget Law is 2026 - and that is by far the smallest, only 525 million. All the budgeted figures come later, in years that the document itself calls "indicative" in its footnotes. Specifically, 2029 and 2030 carry 2,27 billion euros, almost half of the entire plan, and they are not included in any fiscal framework.

And the famous "11 percent of GDP" is an optical illusion that the team is prone to manipulating, as proven by the famous salary increase calculator. In 2026, the projected implementation of projects amounts to only 6,1 percent of GDP; 11 percent is reached only at the peak, in 2028, when it jumps to 12,1 percent, which, it should be remembered, is indicative and as such non-binding.

The most difficult question is: where will the money for these huge billions come from? The central government's capital budget in the same document is projected at 305 million (2026), 320 (2027) and 340 million (2028). And the implementation for 2028 requires 1,133 billion. This means that as much as 70 percent of what was planned for that year still needs to be provided outside the capital budget: from grants and funds from state-owned enterprises. In 2027, this gap is 60 percent, in 2026 "only" 42%. And for 2029 and 2030, when 1,1 billion is requested, the document no longer projects a capital budget because the table simply stops at 2028. The remaining 2,27 billion lives in a fiscal space that does not exist.

To make matters worse, traffic alone jumps 4 and a half times, from 178 million in 2026 to 827 million in 2029, and those very expensive years fall on projects that, as you will see, most often have neither a cost-benefit analysis nor a revised main design.

FIVE BILLION “PROVIDED” FUNDS, TWO OF WHICH ARE “INDICATIVE”

Table 14 proudly bears the title “Amount of Funds Provided”, and at the bottom of the same page, footnotes 17 and 18 coolly state that the amounts for 2029 and 2030 (almost half of the sum) are actually “indicative” and that “they have yet to be considered for integration into the medium-term fiscal framework after 2028”.

In other words, the team has done another bad thought experiment: the money is both secured and non-existent (a bit like Schrödinger’s cat). To make matters worse, the table of operational objective number 3 admits that in 2025 only 40 percent of the projects on the consolidated list meet the maturity criteria, while on page 21 it is written in black and white that the projects “do not meet all the criteria from the readiness assessment”. The plan that swears by the maturity of the projects on the main list has 60 percent of them immature while simultaneously declaring them funded?!

A FEASIBILITY STUDY IS MANDATORY, EXCEPT WHEN IT IS NOT

The document refers on page 16 to a legal obligation: for every project worth over five million euros required is a feasibility study with a cost-benefit analysis. Therefore, you should look at Annex 1. Of the 135 projects that exceed that threshold, i.e. those subject to the obligation, 95 of them or 72% does not have cost-benefit analysis. These 95 projects amount to approximately 2,79 billion euros of spending for which there is no prescribed proof that it is worthwhile.

The material also hides illogicality because it explicitly refers to recommendation number 11 from the IMF's PIMA report, the one that criticizes that "most projects do not have pre-investment studies." The team is truly "genius": first they refer to the criticism, then they neatly reproduce it in their own annex until the immature propaganda machine fails to note it at all.

ONLY 6% OF PROJECTS MEET ALL 4 CRITERIA

Annex 1 is particularly interesting because it assesses each project against 4 criteria: an environmental impact study, a resolved expropriation, a cost-benefit analysis and a revised main design. Out of 210 projects, only 12 (in letters: twelve) or about 6% have all four criteria. Their value is only 341 million euros or just 6 percent of the entire plan, which amounts to about 5,77 billion euros. On the other hand, 28 projects worth 828 million euros they don't have any criterion met.

Most projects do not have a main project, which is missing 71 percent of the total value (almost four billion euros). Among those that do not have one are all five largest highway sections: Mateševo ​​- Andrijevica, Tološi - Smokovac, the Bar and Budva bypasses, and Pošćenje - Brezna. All of them already have a start date of 2026. So, it is being built before it is even drawn up, if anyone believes in these fairy tales anymore.

Only a third of the value of projects has an environmental impact study, so the entire education, health and local infrastructure sectors do not have a single project with a study. Expropriation has not been resolved for 45 percent of the value of projects, so almost two and a half billion euros of projects are planned to be built on land that is not yet state-owned.

NUMERICAL DELICIOUS DElicacies for Sweet Tooth Lovers

When you delve into the annexes, you discover an endless gallery of numbers that deserve to be placed in the Louvre.

The “Možura” landfill, Location 2 costs 400 million euros. In the list of potential utility projects, the construction of sanitary vats at the second location of the “Možura” landfill is estimated at a flat 400 million, while the first location of the same landfill costs 8. That one item doubles the utility sector, from a real 271 to 671 million euros. Probably a zero or two slipped, and it may be the most expensive piece of waste in the Balkans.

One substation is so important that it is listed twice. In the energy section of the list of potential projects, items number 5 and number 8 are identical letter by letter: “Construction of TS 110/35 kV Tuzi and 110 kV Tuzi - Golubovci connections”, both 20 million. What is 20 million euros more or less?!

The Enigma of the Mateševo-Andrijevica Section: 730 or 530 Million? In Annex 1, the same section of highway is worth 730 million euros, and in Annex 2, exactly 530 million euros. A difference of two hundred million for the same piece of asphalt, in the same document, about twenty pages apart. The Bar bypass (420 to 188 million) and the Budva bypass (257 to 322) are similar. Almost half a billion euros difference.

Fifty million less. The total value of the plan varies depending on the mood of the author of this document: the summary says 5,77 billion, footnote 6 claims otherwise (5,75 billion euros), noting that the utility sector differs by ten million euros between the summary table and the annex.

THE COMMISSION THAT RANKING, THEN LET EVERYTHING GO

The project evaluation commission duly scored 53 municipal projects, from a score of 90 to a score of -15. All 53 ended up on the list of “priority projects for financing from the 2026 capital budget”, including the park with a score of 15 and the waste management project with a score of 20, and several of them without a resolved expropriation and without a main project. A logical question arises: why score at all if all projects pass? And all of that, all 120 million, was written to be spent in a single year, which is, to put it mildly, optimistic for construction sites.

CONCLUSION FOR THE PERSISTENT READER

The Master Plan has good intentions and a necessary theme: Montenegro needs mature, well-prepared investments. And therein lies the greatest paradox: not that the document makes a mistake here and there in its summation, but that its own data refutes it in what it purports to do.

The plan that preaches project maturity is composed mostly of projects that are not: out of 210 priority investments worth 5,65 billion euros, only twelve passed all four readiness criteria, accounting for 6 percent of the total value of the Master Plan.

The document, whose job is to teach the state how to choose mature projects, is composed almost exclusively of immature projects. In addition, it does not know exactly how much it is worth (5,77 or 5,75 billion euros), where it will get the money after 2028, or why one substation is listed twice and one section of the highway is 200 million different.

There remains hope that the 2027 version will arrive with harmonized figures, corrected landfills, one Tuzi substation instead of two, and some major projects before work begins.

Until then, the recommendation to citizens remains the same: when someone waves at you with five billion and seven hundred million, ask them: where is the money for salaries and pensions and why are prices so high...

The author is the CEO of Fidelity consulting