Kosovo Democratic Institute has analyzed the Regularity Audit Reports for 2016, published by the National Audit Office, for the central and local governments, as the institutions with larger circulation of public money have noticed a number of issues that are repeated from year to year.

Violations on public procurement are evident on most of the reports published by NAO, summing about 20 percentage from all findings.

The analysis of the audit reports shows that the recommendations which are offered by the Audit, have a low scale of implementation. On the central level only 31% of recommendations from the previous year are fully implemented, while 35% of them have not been addressed at all. As for the local level, only 25% off the recommendations of 2015 are fully implemented, whereas 45% of them were not addressed. What is worth mentioning is that 34% of the recommendations from 2015 are in the process of being implemented, even that they weren’t fully implemented, what shows there is a will on improving these findings.

KDI has analyzed the results of the findings related to procurement actions, with the intention to find the root cause in this process. According to listed results, it has been noticed that the biggest problems, in both central and local institutions, are found in planning with 68%, followed by 62% of findings related to finances, as well as 54% in contract management in both levels of the government.

In approximately 40% of the institutions have been noted findings related to the evaluation of bids, with emphasis on awards to irresponsible Economic Operators, disqualification of the lowest offers, and different shortcomings related to adherence to the bidding requirements.

Is very disturbing the fact that, based on the published findings, 38% of the central and local governments are found in violation to the legal dispositions, respectively avoiding procurement procedures. Based on the aforementioned comparison, we notice that institutions of both levels are faced almost equally with problems on finances and planning, that makes us understand that we have a systematic problem in government, which should be analyzed and addressed.

While in the local government the problem with evaluation of the bids and avoidance of the procedures is more stressed out, in the central level there’s an emphasis in the problems related to contracts management.

From the analysis on Regularity Audit Reports for 2016, it turns out that municipalities with the least evident findings in public procurement are: Municipality of Junik, Suhareka and Zubin Potok, whereas municipalities with the most evident findings are: municipality of Gjakova, Ferizaj and Prishtina, having in consideration the municipalities mentioned last, have the biggest number of public procurement actions in the local level.

As for the central institutions, Ministries with the least evident findings in public procurement are: Industry and Trade Ministry, Labor and Social Welfare Ministry, and European Integration Ministry. Whereas ministries with the most evident findings are Internal Affairs Ministry, Public Administration Ministry, Ministry of Education, and Environment and Spatial Planning Ministry.

Noticing the large number of violations on public procurement, KDI believes that a wide number of these irregularities would be exposed in time and generally avoid, if contracts would be available to the public.

According to KDI, the National Audit Office reports are of a respectable quality. These reports should be considered by institutions such as the Prosecutor Office to find violations that constitute criminal acts and to request responsibility from persons that violated the law.

Also, KDI requires political responsibility from Institutions such as the Parliament and Local Assemblies for officials that report on these bodies. There should be an increase of political willpower and accountability in such a way that Audits recommendations will not be repeated year after year.