Parties Clash over Cash Registers

TIRANA, Sep. 27 – Albania’s opposition Socialists and ruling Democrats have traded accusations of corruption over a government drive to ensure local businesses use new cash registers.
In a press conference on Sunday, Socialist MP Mimi Kodheli accused Prime Minister Berisha of directly benefiting from bribes from companies that have been licensed to install the machines.
“The sale of the new cash registers to traders will bring Prime Minister Berisha and his people that have been licensed to sell them 40 million,” Kodheli said.
“This is the tariff of this corrupt government practice,” she added.
Kodheli accused the prime minister and minister of finance, Ridvan Bode, of having paved the way for the business through a series of laws passed over the last three years.
She said the price of the registers in Albania was between 460 and 600 – higher than the 100 to 130 charged in many EU countries.
Berisha and Bode have denied claims of wrongdoing.
Local traders in Tirana protested for three days last week over the cost of the equipment, before the Ministry of Finance agreed to postpone their installation until the end of the year.
“The deadline to install the registers will be pushed until the end of 2010. Meanwhile, a cheaper model is being negotiated with the companies to supply small businesses,” the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Speaking during an agricultural fair in Tirana, Prime Minister Sali Berisha compared the register to biometric passports and said they were one of his government’s “greatest economic reforms”.
“This is a vital process and, because it imposes transparency, it will have its minor adversaries,” Berisha said, while adding big businesses could claim the registers as an expense, while for smaller businesses the government will deduct the registers’ price from their taxes.
“They will cost businesses nothing,” he added.
The Minister of Finance, Ridvan Bode, on Saturday accused opposition leader, Edi Rama, of being against the new registers in order to “feed the corruption in the Tirana municipality,” where Rama serves as mayor.
“The head of the opposition is trying to manipulate, politically, a process vital for equal competition of businesses in the market,” said Bode.
“Abusing his right to being an opponent to the government, the opposition is trying to create chaos,” Bode added.
Rama has denied the claims.
The current drive represents the third official campaign in two decades to suppress Albania’s black economy and install registers.
An investigation by Balkan Insight published in July found the process of installing the machines has been derailed by rows over sales of faulty equipment and complaints of conflicts of interest.