The civil insight of draft budget 2024 with the citizens of Elbasan and the municipality in search of new sources of funding

The final meeting of the tour of activities for the dialogue with the citizens and the municipality of Elbasan regarding the challenges of the draft budget 2024 was realized in a warm and quite cooperative spirit, which is the reflection of the performance indicators of the municipality. In the analysis based on the social audit, the performance of the year 2023 and previous years was also discussed, it was a sound basis and quite valuable for the values ​​that the citizen’s voice receives.

The head of local revenue at the meeting, after evaluating the material presented by ALTAX experts, also presented those concerns related to the need they have for better cooperation with the central government with regional scope, as well as to strengthen exactly those voices that have a greater effectiveness if informality and tax evasion were fought harder.

The municipality of Elbasan, unlike many other municipalities in the country, but even those that are comparable for the economic and financial dimension, has a local budget with a completely social face. It is more than 37% of the local budget that goes precisely to social care, unlike the Municipality of Berat or the Municipality of Vlora where social access has a significant decrease, increasing the expenses for the administration of municipalities and local services.

The discussion in Elbasan was focused on increasing the financing sources of the municipality for the projects that the citizens are looking for water supply, but also for agriculture and the traditional economy of services.

The income indicators are increasing and there is room for a better mobilization for the wealth tax with its constituent taxes, as well as the collection of fees that occupy a major share in the local budget.

ALTAX experts through the presentation of the findings according to the latest report “Civil insight: 2024 budget project for the citizens of Elbasan” presented an innovative approach regarding the best management of the available financial resources starting from the resources that are still few in relation to requirements and needs.

Based on the few and insufficient resources available to the municipality, the experts, after analyzing and dealing with many similar situations, presented several proposals for discussion, with the aim of financial management, where the emphasis is placed on the requests from the municipalities for new resources and tools that can to dialogue with MFE, but also with donors and with central institutions that interact and communicate with local government.