Same company wins new €345,000 government media tender after earlier >€380,000 contract
Videos of about 90 seconds, priced at €250 each under the first contract, are part of a 434‑clip YouTube playlist; opposition calls the project pre-election promotion.
Short promotional clips produced for a government YouTube playlist are at the centre of questions about value for money after the same company that won last year’s media monitoring contract received a new, smaller tender on September 1 worth 345,000 euros.
The videos run about 90 seconds each; the first item in the Government of North Macedonia’s playlist "Projects for Lasting Change" was posted roughly nine months ago. According to publicly available procurement documents, the original contract—awarded to Frajdej Communications as the sole bidder—covered photo, video and text coverage of project phases and was worth more than 380,000 euros.
Costs and output
Under the contract, one video was priced at 250 euros plus VAT and a single photograph at 25 euros plus tax; a single communications campaign was budgeted at around 25,000 euros. The Government says about 95 percent of the work planned under the first contract has been carried out.
The videos appear on the Government’s YouTube channel as a separate playlist and currently number 434 clips. The contract originally envisaged 900 videos—approximately double the present output.
Opposition parties have accused the project of serving as partisan and government promotion ahead of elections. The Government rejected those claims, saying the initiative and its dedicated projects website provide transparency about spending and project delivery. "The monitoring of implementation was organized in three phases, initial, working and final phase. For each project visual and textual documentation was prepared, with photographs, video materials and information about the project, its financial structure, scope, implementation phase and achieved results. Approximately 95 percent of the agreed scope under the first contract has been implemented," the Government said.
The company that has received both tenders is owned by Skopje-based Marko Kostadinovski and his association Nova Perspektiva. Although there were earlier suggestions of Bulgarian ownership, a Bulgarian partner left the company’s ownership structure in 2024 after the change of government and before the two tenders were submitted.
Photo: press material from the event
