Montenegro's government has asserted that intensified enforcement against tobacco smuggling and tighter regulation of gambling activities have generated more than €100 million in additional budget benefits compared to the previous administration. The figure, announced by Deputy Prime Minister Momo Koprivica, is significant enough to influence the country's debt trajectory, yet the public record currently lacks a detailed breakdown to substantiate the claim fully.
Koprivica's statement, reported by Vijesti on Friday, attributes the fiscal improvement to the elimination and destruction of smuggled tobacco products combined with stricter oversight of gambling operations. However, he did not specify the exact time frame, the baseline period of comparison, or how the gains are distributed between the two initiatives. It also remains unclear whether these benefits represent recurring revenue, seized assets, or retained domestic spending.
Montenegro's official budget execution report for July shows total revenue of €1.717 billion for the first seven months of 2026, an increase of €137.2 million (8.7%) compared to the same period in 2025. This figure was €28.4 million above the government's own seven-month target. While these numbers do not directly validate or refute Koprivica's claim, they underscore the scale: the asserted €100 million gain equals roughly 73% of the year-on-year revenue increase and is 3.5 times the amount by which revenue exceeded plan.
Partial evidence from official disclosures lends some credibility to the government's narrative. A May 2025 release indicated that Montenegrin payment cards spent €6.32 million on foreign gambling sites in 2022 and €6.18 million in 2023. After banks blocked relevant merchant codes, these payments reportedly fell to zero by the fourth quarter of 2024 and first quarter of 2025. However, preventing outflows does not automatically translate into tax revenue collection.
Similarly, the Customs Administration's 2025 annual report recorded €1.415 billion in customs revenue, up €121.74 million (9.4%) from 2024. This total encompasses customs duties, VAT, excise, and other lines, but the report does not attribute the entire increase to tobacco enforcement.
For investors, the potential impact of an additional €100 million is substantial. The government's 2026–2029 fiscal guidelines project public revenue of €3.5768 billion this year, or 41.6% of GDP. On that basis, €100 million represents 2.8% of annual revenue and about 1.17% of GDP. The projected 2026 deficit stands at 3.7% of GDP, so a genuinely additional, repeatable €100 million could cover roughly one-third of that gap, reducing it by approximately 1.17 percentage points.
However, such a scenario is illustrative rather than a forecast. Enforcement gains may already be embedded in the government's baseline, and Koprivica's figure might span multiple years. The July report shows a year-to-date deficit of €143.8 million, which is €97.8 million better than planned. The medium-term guidelines anticipate public debt to start declining in 2027, reaching 59.9% of GDP by end-2029, and improved tax compliance could strengthen this path if sustained beyond one-off seizures and tobacco stock disposals.
The strongest argument for Koprivica's claim is that enforcement gains accumulate across multiple channels, making them difficult to capture in any single budget line. Conversely, the main objection is attribution: economic growth, inflation, tax policy changes, and ordinary collection efforts could also boost revenue. For sovereign investors, the definitive evidence would be a finance-ministry reconciliation identifying the affected years, budget categories, and cash collected, followed by matching receipts in the 2026 year-end accounts. Until then, €100 million remains a government assertion, not an audited upgrade to Montenegro's fiscal outlook.
