Communists suspect investments in political and ethnic bases, Local Finance Bill removed from programme

Sazan Ibrahimi, chairman of the Kosovo Commission Association, said that the Bill for Financing Local, was the first grant of fourth, which totals up to 100m euros, from which these means would be proportionally distributed to all municipalities.

“The leaders of the Kosovo Republic municipalities, not only this government, but the past governments have complained that there are investments from the central level to the political and ethnic basis, for this reason we as an association have asked to become a special grant for capital investments in municipalities, where all financial means that are exploited by the central level for capital investments at the local level where it is competent to go to the fourth rank and then in this grant distributed across all municipalities based on two criteria, the criterion is the first number of residents and the second is the area of the municipality. We have reached this agreement with the Kurti I government, where we thought it would be initiated with the Law on Local Finance amendment and since then this bill has been working and reworked”.

The operating group submitted the final draft of this bill to the Ministry of Finance last year. In the Local Finance Bill, there is also the fourth grant, which in the term totals between 80m and 100m euros, for a year. We've asked that all means that go for capital investments from the central level go to this grand and then spread proportionally to all municipalities”.

“We accepted this decision, but I think the government has decided to withdraw from the legislative programme and I think that, I don't know why it has become such an act, sincerely because the meeting of the mayors has been with Prime Minister Kurti a few days ago and at that meeting no one has mentioned, this has not been debated, it has not been discussed withdrawing this bill, while the mayors on the other side have asked to proceed as quickly as possible with the Law on Local Finance because the main interest of municipalities is fourth. There is space now that the mayors may continue to say there will be investments on political and ethnic grounds, because the fourth grant of the Local Finance Bill has been withdrawn from the constitutional strategy”, Ibrahim said, respectively.

Ibrahimi said the fourth grant would not allow the ministries to decide where that money would be invested, but that would have been decided on by the municipalities themselves.

Ibrahim also added that the government and Minister Hekuran Murati would have had to debate the issue with mayors and not discuss his departure.

The fourth grade is about 80m to 100m euros, we're not saying that those financial means will not be poured into municipal budgets, but that the fourth grant would not allow the ministries of the line to decide on the fate of those millions, but that municipalities would decide where those millions of euros would go, that grant would allow all municipalities to benefit from these millions of euros”.

The government of the Republic of Kosovo has attracted it to this year's legislative strategy, has been able by Minister Iron Murati to debate the issue with mayors. That way without arguing, although he has had the opportunity to discuss it, there has been a withdrawal from the Government of Kosovo in terms of this bill”, Ibrahim said.