Pristina municipality budget destroyed through student milk

But, the tender for this milk supply in 2017, according to the organisation “Democrecy Plus”, has damaged the municipality's budget for at least 36 thousand and 684 euros and 90 cents.

This organisation, which has monitored procurement activities in the municipality of Pristina, has published a report on this tender, in which it reportedly came as a consequence of the VAT rate non-version given by the winning company, “Abrazen” (former-Devolli).

According to this report, the company has offered a price of 20 cents on VAT. However, the VAT - free price has offered 18 cents. “Democracy plus” estimates this represents an error in VAT calculations, as the VAT on milk is 8% and not 11%, how calculated.

According to the organisation, at the actual VAT rate for milk, the price has had to be 19.4 cents, while after the rounding is determined 19 cents, but in this case it is round 20 cents.

We have warned that in some municipalities, it is creating space for companies to cheat out even with catalogues and financial offers. We've seen in many other municipalities this is done with Excel, areas are protected and companies can't change the VAT rate. In the municipality of Pristina, it has not been such a practice, they have been able to intervene in any part of their financial offer and thus deceive the municipality and raise the VAT rate”.

According to Zeynep, this situation is a result of limiting competition through setting strict tender criteria from the municipality.

Two years ago, the price for a milk package was 10 cents, and now it's doubled to 20 cents. The report reportedly said that if contracts were to be connected at 10 cents, the municipality budget would be saved for 366,849 euros.
On the issue of doubling the price, the municipality is also refusing to admit it is wrong. There is no point since two years ago when there was no price of milk on the market, or even if it had been 1 or 2 per cent, the municipality of Pristina doubled that price. We think the result has been the fact that the criteria have been very strict and potentially adapted to the company in question. The company actually did that in its bid, the municipality only accepted it as such, without making the offer's actual calculation of”.

In Vetevendosje Movement, the situation with this tender is disturbing.
What is even more disturbing is the fact that the price this year has been doubled compared to the period when the Vetevendosje Movement has governed. The tender had just come out for next year and there were the same predictions and specific conditions that would still favour the same milk that applied last year. I believe they wanted to hide the value of the tender, because they dropped it to 350 grand, but the amount is down to 50 percent, leaving it at about 1 million and 800 grand. So that's how it's tried to manipulate publicly, whereas actually the price is the same, 20 cents, the predictions are that the same price is” again.

While Chairman Shpend Ahmeti has said they cannot show any company what price it should compete with. Ahmeti has said the price they receive milk is cheaper than the market price.

Company Says TV Growth The US has come as a result of a technical error. According to her, the moment this error was observed, about 30,000 euros have been returned to the municipality.
The “This is only about technical error in the estimate, which has just been counted, as such, improved and the municipality has immediately been returned to about 30,000 euros as a result of this estimate. So the VAT rate for this product has not increased and the municipality at the end has not paid the product more dearly. It was simply a technical issue, since the tender rules allow only 2 figures after the December wait, and in the inability to write the exact numbers after the December wait, the price is recorded as round-up”.

The company has also argued the doubling of the price, saying three years ago they have launched milk at the promotional price, while now, according to her, it has returned to real market rates.

In 2015 the price has been 10 cents per unit, because we, this year we've launched this product and it's the practice of our company that when we launch a product, we aim to have promotional prices with the goal of sharing consumers, while in this case, having in particular been considering that consumers were mostly children. Now, the price has become the real market rates of 20 cents per unit (250ml)”.