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Ministry of Public Administration to urgently announce the call for co-financing of EU projects

Coalition Cooperating Towards Goal, which consists of 100 NGOs, urges the Ministry of Public Administration (MPA) to announce a call for co-financing projects and programmes of NGOs funded from EU funds in swift procedure, thus fulfilling its legal obligation.

The Government of Montenegro has adopted the Regulation on the procedure and manner of co-financing projects and programmes supported from funds of European Union, and it was published in the Official Gazette of Montenegro No. 64/2018.

We remind, the Government was obliged to adopt this Regulation back in January this year, but it did so with a delay of eight months. This can not be the reason neither for the call for co-financing projects not to be published in this year, nor for not fulfilling that legal obligation. Beneficiaries of projects and programmes of NGOs should not bear the consequences due to the Government’s delay in carrying out its affairs.

We expect the MPA to announce a call in an urgently in order to complete the co-financing process of projects and programmes financed from EU funds by the end of the calendar year.

If the call is not announced, we will be convinced that the Government postponed the adoption of the Regulation with clear intention, so that it would not allocate funds for this purpose in this year, thus complicating the implementation of projects, as well as a work of non-governmental organisations.

Given that these are EU funded projects, the Coalition of NGOs will inform the EU Delegation to Montenegro about this request, as it was the case with similar requests.

The Coalition of NGOs Cooperating  Towards  Goal currently gathers 100 non-governmental organisations from all over Montenegro and represents the largest organised NGO coalition in Montenegro.

Ana Novaković, President of the Management Board

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Our Proposals for the Open Government Partnership

Without amending the Law on Free Access to Information, opening data on public spending and enabling citizens to be equal participants in the development of public policies, our administration remains closed to essential issues of interest to citizens.

This is the core of 15 proposals, which we have sent with the aim of improving the Action Plan prepared by the Ministry of Public Administration within the framework of the global Open Government Partnership initiative.

The abolition of tax and business secrecy as the base for limiting the access to information should be a priority measure of the administration’s opening. The current practice of state authorities is to declare information of public interest as tax or business secret. Thus, bodies, primarily in the service of citizens, are equated with private companies, and the public remains deprived of information that is very important for assessing effectiveness of these bodies.

We also submitted other proposals for improving the Law on Free Access to Information. Among the other, we proposed prescribing that the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data and Free Access to Information can annul the confidentiality of the data, if the secrecy mark is not sufficiently justified. Also, we proposed  to re-introduce the former competence of the Agency to decide on appeals in the first instance.

Around 20 million euro is spent annually from the budgetary reserve without citizens knowing how. Only during the last year, the Government paid almost 2.5 million euro to the citizens for improving their financial situation, upon their requests. In addition, more than a million euro have been paid to the citizens for medical treatments and education. In order to insure equal treatment of all citizens and to improve the integrity of deciding on the allocation of the budgetary reserve funds, publishing of these decisions is of a great importance. Otherwise, doubts about potential political and other misuses of these funds remain justified.

We believe that creating a catalog of services provided by state administration bodies, local governments and organisations with public authorities would make it easier to access the basic information about the services available to citizens. Similarly, creating a register of obligors of the Law on Free Access to Information would enable a more consistent application of this law, while providing at the same time citizens all relevant contact information for free access to information in one place.

The authorities are now obliged to publish only salaries of public officials, while citizens remain deprived of information on salary scales for each individual title/job category. It is therefore necessary to proactively publish salary scales for all categories in all institutions that are funded by tax-payers’ money.

The openness of the public policy making process is also an important element of the transparency of the work of the public administration. Opinion of the European Commission experts on all drafts of Montenegrin laws should be available to citizens and members of the Parliament, who ultimately adopt laws. We also gave more detailed proposals for improving the transparency of Government sessions.

Individual annual reports of contracting authorities of implemented public procurement should be available in machine readable and searchable format, not as scanned PDF documents, which is now the case. This is particularly important if one takes into account that there are over 600 reports of contracting authorities with spending data exceeding half a billion euro a year, and are now unsearchable and very difficult to read. The annual public procurement reports prepared by the Public Procurement Agency, which contain a horizontal overview and a set of statistical data on public procurement procedures and are very extensive – nearly 200 pages, should also be machine readable and easily searchable. Thus, information on total  public procurement spending would be easily accessible to citizens.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is an initiative established in 2011 with the aim of serving as an international platform for countries in the process of building more transparent and accountable public administrations. In 2017, Montenegro was suspended and marked as inactive state within the OGP, and the reason for this was the failure to fulfil its obligations. The Ministry of Public Administration should prepare a new Action Plan by the end of the year in order to regain Montenegro’s status as an active country within this initiative

IA Team

You can download our proposals for the Open Government Partnership here. 

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Call for Proposals – Small Grants Facility

Institute Alternative (IA)

within the project “Money Watch – Civil Society Guarding the Budget

announces 

Call for Proposals – Small Grants Facility 

for CSOs from Montenegro

Deadline for submitting project proposals, aimed at increasing effectiveness of participation of CSOs, media and citizens in scrutiny of public spending, is 15 November 2018.

In order to be eligible for a grant, the applicants must:

  • be a legal person;
  • be non-profit making;
  • be directly responsible for the preparation and management of the action with the co-applicant(s) and affiliated entity(ies), not acting as an intermediary;
  • be registered in Montenegro at least 12 months prior to the deadline for submission of project proposals and
  • have an annual turnover of more than EUR 10,000 in 2016 or 2017.

If only one organisation applies for the grant, its annual turnover in 2016 or 2017 should be above 10.000 euro. If more then one organisation applies for the grant (lead applicants and partner(s)), their cumulative turnover in 2016 or 2017 should be above 10.000 euro.

To apply for grants, following documents should be completed and submitted: Application Form, Budget proposal and Logical framework.

Before completing these forms, please carefully read Guidelines for applicants.

For sub-grantees, we have prepared capacity-building programme in project management and public spending oversight, aimed at contributing to successful implementation of their projects and their future work in this area.

Complete applications, along with the necessary technical documentations, should be sent via e-mail: info@institut-alternativa.org with the subject – Application for the Call for Proposals “Money Watch – Civil Society Guarding the Budget”, by 15 November 2018, at 5 PM.

In case of doubt, you can get additional information by sending a question to info@institut-alternativa.org, by November 5, 2018 at the latest.

IA will organise three info sessions to present the Call for proposals, according to the following schedule:

Municipality of Bijelo Polje, Assembly Hall, 15 October, 12:30 PM

Municipality of Budva, Academy of Knowledge, 19 October, 12:00 PM

Capital City Podgorica, EU Info Centre, 22 October, 12:00 PM. 

Supported by the EU Delegation in Montenegro, IA has ensured 85.000 euro for this Small Grants Facility. Individual grants requested under this Call for proposals must fall between 8.000 EUR and 10.000 EUR.

Note: Organisations which have already received two sub-grants or are direct beneficiaries through the IPA 2016 Civil Society Facility Montenegro Programme EuropeAid/153998/DD/ACT/MECSF are not eligible to apply.

Project “Money Watch – Civil Society Guarding the Budget” is being implemented by Institute Alternative, in partnership with Institute of Public Finance from Zagreb and NGO New Horizon from Ulcinj. The project is financially supported by European Union.

 

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20 Proposals for Transparency and Accountability at the Local Level

Essential reform of local self-government financing requires more frequent informing and reporting, through reporting to councillors about budget execution, regularly publishing analytical cards, audit reports and stricter penaltie provisions.

Institute Alternative addressed written comments and proposals to the Ministry of Finance within public consultations, in order to improve Draft Law on Local Self-Government Financing.

The main issues of the Draft Law are regarding lack of solutions that would increase transparency and accountability of local governments in managing citizens’ money.

Among other things, we proposed improving the use of funds from the current and permanent budgetary reserves, with prescribing limits in which these budget lines are allowed to move, as well as mandatory reporting to the public on all transactions.

A particular problem is temporary financing, which is allowed during the first three months of the year, if the local self-government do not adopt the budget decision on time. However, many municipalities are “breaking through” this three-month deadline. That is why we have proposed the obligation to report on consumption in the period when the municipality has not adopted budget decision. It is also necessary to introduce special restrictions regarding the borrowing and use of the budgetary reserve in this period.

The proposed legal solutions envisage the creation of a “revolving” fund, with purpose to create opportunities for municipalities to prefinance projects from donor founds, in the form of loan. But, the obligations of municipalities to report on consumption of these funds are not required, nor is provided protection for inappropriate use of donors’ funds or delays in carrying out supported activities. State should not be in a position to cover errors in the implementation of projects and ensure the return of its funds.

External auditing report must be submitted, beside Municipal Assembly, to the Ministry of Finance and State Audit Institution as well. Ministry supervises the legality of the work of local self-governments in implementation of the Law on Local Self- Government Financing and State Audit Institution audits final account of the municipality’s budget.

Current Draft Law does not envisage any form of informing the Municipal Assembly about budget execution during fiscal year to which the budget refers, which means that neither councilors nor the citizens have information on budget execution through the year.

In order to encourage the development of internal audit and increase its impact at the municipal level, we propose to introduce the obligation of submitting the internal audit report to the Municipal Assembly.

Particular attention was devoted to the penal provisions, which are considerably lower than the maximum amount stipulated by the Criminal Procedure Code. In addition, provisions do not include domain of budget rebalance, allocation, use of the current budgetary reserve, state-owned enterprises and public institutions reporting, as well as other types of borrowing.

Municipalities must be obliged to use their websites, to make important budget documents easily accessible to their citizens. In this regard, it is necessary to oblige municipalities to continuously publish analytical cards, and not only in periods of elections.

Institute Alternative within “Money Watch – Civil Society Guarding the Budget” project financially supported by European Union in cooperation with partners, is preparing a report on public finance management at local level, with a particular focus on the openness of local budgets.

Institute Alternative Team

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How much revenues – thus much responsibilities

Reaction of Coalition KUM to the draft Law on Local Self-Governments Financing

Coalition for transparency and fight against corruption at the local level (KUM) commends decision of the Government of Montenegro to finally systematically deal with local finances via new Law on Local Self-Government Financing, but warns that the draft that is currently up for a public discussion will not significantly improve the level of transparency and responsibility of municipalities towards citizens’ money.

Namely, the draft Law has remedial nature that reflects in transferring a part of revenues to municipalities. However, it does not deal with substantial problems that prevent financial stability of municipalities: irrational spending and problems on expenditure side.

Coalition for transparency and fight against corruption at the local level (KUM)
Coalition for transparency and fight against corruption at the local level (KUM)

Draft Law continues to confirm privileged treatment of the Capital City and the Old Royal Capital in regards to amount of part of revenue on personal income which belongs to them, although Cetinje has its own multi-million development fund, and Podgorica has already an opportunity to collect higher revenues than all others. On the other hand, revenues of municipalities which belong to the coastal region, which also have problems with financial stability, and some of them are beneficiaries of the Equalisation fund, will be reduced for approximately 3,6 million EUR due to change that revenues as per compensation for utilisation of coastal zone should in their entirety be a revenue of the Public Enterprise for Coastal Zone Management of Montenegro.

Changes in the manner of allocation of funds from Equalisation fund may be able to reduce injustice and favouring of certain municipalities, but draft law does not go into details of utilisation of these funds, which instead of stimulus for development and overcoming underdevelopment still remain a revenue for patching up budget holes.

Norm that the right to withdrawal of funds from the Revolving fund, which is to be established, has municipality which signed contract on project implementation with donors or leading partner, should acknowledge also other modes occurring in the practice, such as pre-contract, decision on approval of funds for project implementation and similar.
On the other hand, draft does not contain more significant novelties in regard to accountability and transparency. Introduction of penal provisions is rendered meaningless if supervision over implementation of laws is left as a responsibility of non-existent budget inspection of Ministry of Finances.

This testifies that Ministry of Finances gave in under pressure of local self-governments which wish to resolve all problems with financial stability by new cession of revenues from central level, with no further efforts to collect source revenues, with no responsibility towards their citizens regarding the manner of spending of their money and with no intention to rationalise expenditure.

Coalition KUM points out that Draft Law on Local Self-Governments Financing will not achieve greater level of responsibility of municipalities or more rational management of the money that they already have, nor will it resolve black holes in data accessibility and transparency of operation of municipalities, neither of institutions and public enterprises at the local level. With no reforms in the manner in which municipalities spend the money, accompanied with strong and effective control mechanisms, there will be no financial sustainability either, no economic progress, and thus, no balanced regional development.

Coalition for transparency and fight against corruption at the local level (KUM) is comprised of 15 CSOs as follows: Centre for Civic Education (CCE), Centre for Monitoring and Research (CeMI), UL-Info from Ulcinj, Institute Alternative (IA), Za Druga from Petrovac, Centre for Development of Non-Governmental Organisations (CDNGO), Juventas, Bonum from Pljevlja, Active Zone from Cetinje, Democratic Centre of Bijelo Polje, Centre for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIJ MNE), Union of Medical Doctors of Montenegro, Centre for Security, Sociological and Criminological Research ‘Defendology’ from Niksic, Monitoring Group Ulcinj – MogUL and Centre for Political Education from Niksic. The Coalition was formed within the framework of project ‘Let’s Put Corruption into Museum’, implemented by the CCE in cooperation with partners and with the support of EU Delegation to the Montenegro.