Civil insight with the Dibrans to increase the deliberative dialogue on the budget and address the approaches

The local budget 2024, which is drawn up every year based on the income from public money, determines the projects and services that will be offered to local citizens and businesses.

Expenditures in 2023 in Diber Municipality are mainly allocated to social transfers (56%). The rest of the main part is programmed to be spent on investments for rural roads and infrastructural maintenance, for basic education, pre-school and those delegated for secondary education, for various public services, as well as for the administration of the municipality (35%).

The remaining part of the expenses (9%) is for waste management, lighting, irrigation, and drainage, etc.

The low performance of local revenues during 2023 is caused by sales declines, as well as below-programmed revenues from real estate taxes and local fees. This income trend analyzed for the last three years shows that local government budgets are strained and not properly confronted with economic and demographic development.

The budget prepared by the municipality is based on and divided into five categories, which cover a) Salaries and contributions, b) Goods and maintenance, c) Local services, d) Projects, e) Capital investments.

The municipality’s own income is predicted in 2024 at the same growth levels for the next three years with 2% each.

The absolute value of the revenue that the Municipality will aim to collect is 200 million ALL per year, or 2,600 ALL/year from each resident in Dibër.

Citizens’ contribution is limited to only a few spaces for intervention and influence on the budget project.
They are in the form of proposals for adding or removing projects or reducing/increasing any amount dedicated to a subsidy.

In the meeting with representatives of the Municipality and the local civil society, the main discussion was how it relates to the still unaddressed problems for a solution for the taxation of agricultural land. The main problem in terms of the correct and complete non-collection of this tax is the wrong policy regarding social support, which affects the non-declaration and ownership of land in exchange for the benefit of the amount received as a subsidy from the villagers.

Meanwhile, the problem of salary increase in the administration by the government has created a differentiation for the local administration, where the difference between the salary increase of an employee of the central administration benefits up to 30% is different the level of increase of the employee of the municipality who benefits up to half the increase compared to the central administration.

Based on the few and insufficient resources at the municipality’s disposal, our experts, after analyzing and dealing with many similar situations, have presented in this format several proposals for discussion, where, with the aim of good financial management, new resources and tools should be sought that can to dialogue with the MFE, but also with donors and with the central institutions that interact and communicate with the local government, which you can find in the report “Civilian insight: Project Budget 2024 for Dibrans”

From the comparison between the draft budget project 2024 of the Municipality and the demands of the citizens according to our survey, it results that there are points of convergence, as far as it is related to investments in water pipes and sewers, as well as access to basic and preschool education.

However, the visible differences are seen in the service part for markets and the regional economy, as well as assistance for agriculture, waste management and quality health.

Public discussions with the participation of expertise have given citizens a civil view of where a budget is spent, in a way that better reflects the strengths, needs and aspirations of the population, and from the reaction to the 2024 budget the approach can be more