site.btaNearly 70% of Municipal Costs Can Be Classified as Failure - Survey

Nearly 70% of Municipal Costs Can Be Classified as Failure - Survey

Sofia, May 11 (BTA) - Nearly 70 per cent of municipality costs can be classified as a failure and a mere 5.0 per cent as a success. One-fourth of the activities whose implementation and results do not allow association with any of the two groups have been defined as "unclassified", a review of all audit reports of the National Audit Office for the municipalities in Bulgaria shows. The document, received at BTA on Wednesday, was prepared by the Institute for Market Economics (IME).

The reports cover 83 municipalities and their costs for nearly 6,000 million leva for the period 2011-2014.

IME sees as failures those costs and programmes which the audit reports say do not fulfil the goals set. Unfounded expenditure, fund wasting, bad property management and considerable violations in public procurement fall in this category.

The total sum of municipal administration failure amounts to 3,500 million leva for the 2011-2014 period, or over two-thirds of all municipal costs. Twenty-one of the municipal audit reports, or about one-fourth of all reports, have been referred to the prosecution because of criminal evidence.

Budget management, public procurement award and management of municipal property are among the main problems of local administration.

The analysis of the failures of municipal administration reveals the pressing need for more control and transparency at the spending of public funds, as well as a functioning judicial system, the press release says. Further decentralization of local finances and privatization of municipal property could also help limit the ineffective spending of taxpayers' money, IME concludes.