Authorities want to see amalgamation of most local authorities in order to save funds, increase profitability.
TIRANA, Oct. 24 – Albania has too many municipalities, the new central government says, complaining that many of these local governing units – known locally as communes – only leech of the central government funding producing nothing in tax revenue of their own.
They have many employees that cost the state budget up to $25 million a year, central government officials say.
The government now want to implement a large administrative reform that would amalgamate half the country’s municipalities, officials revealed at a conference organized in cooperation with the OSCE.
The government of Albania has set the administrative and territorial reform as a priority to be accomplished before the 2015 local elections.
“A new administrative territorial reform will undoubtedly strengthen the economy, strengthen communities from a social point of view and give a further chance to the culture of living together in this country,” said Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The current administrative and territorial division of Albania resulted in the creation of very small local government units with limited resources and assets, which make it difficult to provide quality services to the citizens. The need for a new division has been identified by several organizations during the last decade, including the OSCE.
“The administrative and territorial reform is a key component of ensuring good governance, which is an important part of the Presence’s mandate,” said the OSCE Ambassador Florian Raunig. “The reform should comply with the provisions of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, and, in particular, must guarantee the political, administrative and financial independence of local governments. It is essential to ensure that the decision-making process for this reform be transparent, inclusive and consensual.”
Rama added that “much more can be done with the same financing resources just by changing a number of internal territorial and administrative borders. Nowadays, this is the tendency everywhere.”
European Union Delegation Ambassador Ettore Sequi said that repeatedly, the progress report on Albania, including the 2013 progress report, has been quite explicit about the various concerns with the functioning of local government units.
“There are known concerns about collection of revenues, strategic planning, human resource management, financial control, transparency, as well as the high number of staff with temporary contracts in local government units,” he said.
