municipalities to stop many projects due to virus crisis

Kosovo's thirty-eight municipalities, for 2020, have planned to personally invest around 83m euros, but that will be elusive, according to a research the Institute for Advanced Studies (GAP) has done.

Based on reports Kosovo municipalities have made at the Ministry of Finance and Transfers in March and April, they are said to have collected close to 10m euros less compared to the same period last year.

Bekim Salihu, a researcher in GAP, told Radio Free Europe that this research has pointed out that the pandemic has hit in Kosovo municipalities hard.

The assessment made by GAP shows that in all municipalities in Kosovo there are large reductions of municipal revenues, and this in some municipalities differs from 45 percent to 90 percent. That translated into numbers is that during March alone, and in April, municipalities have lost 9.3m euros of their own inflow”, Salihu said.

The municipalities, according to GAP research, will emerge damaged in private revenues from the property tax category, from police fines on local roads, from court decisions and from the use of public spaces on gastronomy.

124 capital projects to be postponed due to pandemic

The decline of revenues in Kosovo municipalities will be witnessed with the inability to implement certain capital projects.

From the ongoing research, Salihu says, at least in 16 municipalities, 124 capital projects will be delayed as a result of the situation created by the pandemic COVID-19.

The “will be a problematic year in terms of public investment because revenues will not only fall to the local level, but also to the central one, and that will affect the local level of”, Salihu says.

Of the predictions made by Kosovo's incumbent Government, it is said that the state budget may have up to 200m euros less in revenues, which are collected by the Kosovo Tax Administration and Customs.

The Kosovo government, in the first package of fiscal emergency, has earmarked 10m euros for Kosovo municipalities that will be used to overcome the consequences created by measures taken in preventing COVID-19, caused by Coronavirus.

But, which this value says Salihu, it is insufficient to set the consequences of pandemic.

Central level help that local

Kosovo Communist Association Executive Director Saban Ibrahimi told Radio Free Europe that the measures taken for preventing COVID-19 will affect the failure to register its own revenues, which make up an essential part of the municipal budget.

“Pandemia will be a factor that will cause these revenues (about 83m euros planned in 2020) to fail to collect at the high level. We hope that in co-operation with the central level, capital projects that have been planned in the municipal budget will be compensated”, Ibrahimi says.

The failure of municipal revenues, Ibrahimi adds, will affect the lives of the citizens of these municipalities, where capital projects that mainly had to do with improving infrastructure cannot be realised.

“Any investment in municipalities that have planned for this year has been intended to have an impact on improving the lives of citizens, such as road-related projects, water supply, channelling and other”, says Ibrahimi, adding that the mayors have pledged that these projects that are not realised this year will be realised in the coming year.

Local governments in Kosovo have played an active role in the undertaking of measures in preventing the spread of the coronary.

All Kosovo municipalities have activated local crisis headquarters and have established operational groups on the ground.