State over half a billion euros in debt to businesses, citizens

While concern remains that in some budgetary organisations and Kosovo Telecom, they continue to pay salaries for workers without going to work at all.

National Auditor General of the Audit Office Besnik Osmani says there are three serious threats being made to the state budget, from major state debts to citizens and businesses, from the decline of budget revenues and external debt.

Osmani in an interview for Kosova Prees says that by counting obligations according to all bases, economic operators and citizens have financial claims on the government of over 556m euros, which, according to him, this trend is on the rise.

If these three are not well managed, the budget is seriously threatened and able to finance state institutions. Unfortunately, the last two debts against government from businesses and citizens are increasing by 16 percent compared to the previous year. This is a very harmful indicator, but it is also an alarm for institutions that have the responsibility to improve this. Contrary to that is the other indicator that is increasing government debt to businesses. Therefore, with the efficiency of the judicial system and of the magistrates, we will be in a position when the government has to pay these debts, while on the other hand it is in a position you cannot register and on the other side you have to pay. In this form, of course, the threat comes. These debts have exceeded 500m euros. External debt, is a debt somewhere slightly over 1 billion euros”, Osmani said.

On the other hand, the amount of citizens and businesses' debt to the Government is almost the same as that of the previous year over 637 million are untapped debts, of which at the central level is 452 million and at a local rate of 185 million.

The huge share of un collected debts concerns ATK and Dogana, which together have 404 million outstanding debts, or about 64% of the total amount.

The audience has raised another concern, for some organizations and public companies that pay salaries for workers without even going to work.

“As far as budgetary organisations which are directly financed from the state budget have a certain number of violations for which we have given some 950 recommendations, which in most institutions are of the same nature. If we take the wage category what we've recorded is that we have employment that has contracts related to the work and have not respected the application procedures related to transparency and competition and their salaries are made by budget codes that have been wrong. In wages, we also have other cases when paid off from the salary list that is beyond legal criteria, or we have other cases when workers are paid, the institutions for which they work and receive salaries have not been able before our audiences to testify that those workers have done their jobs even in demands involving going to work”, Osmani said.

He has further said that the number of organisations that were audited for 2019 has given 26 negative opinions of auditing, mainly for public enterprises.

The concerns, according to Osmani, concern the liquidity of companies and the financial difficulties they have and will have to offer these services.

“As far as institutions where we have the most critical points are just public enterprises because they have obligations either short and long term. They are growing in comparison with past years. This enables them to pay bills for their operations and if this trend continues in the future there may be a lack of basic services for citizens. Of course, our most volume reports are in Telekom and Kosovo Post, both in size and in the services they offer. What we have recorded in these companies is roughly similar to the violations which I just mentioned in groups of employment and wages because it is impossible to get involved in an interview all”, he said.

Osmani speaking of the 2019 Addition Report, says that from the number of organisations that have been audited against pandemic, coverage has been on the level.

The audience claims that about 130 audit reports have been produced that have included all the institutions using public money and that it has reported a certain number of violations related to public money management and quality services to citizens.

From the preceding year, only 40 percent of the recommendations have been applied, and 15 percent are in place, while the rest of the recommendations have not yet begun, that means greater commitment is required.