The Supreme State Audit Report for the Municipality of Saranda highlights a significant increase in operating expenses during 2024, increasing the pressure on local finances. Specifically, expenses for salaries and benefits have increased from 127,217,485 lek in 2023 to 163,299,229 lek in 2024, with an increase of 36,081,744 lek, or 28.4%, while social security contributions have increased from 21,076,685 lek to 27,020,621 lek, i.e. by 5,943,936 lek more.
This increase in personnel costs reflects an expansion of the budgetary burden, which according to the audit requires more careful management to guarantee financial sustainability, especially in conditions where these expenses are of a fixed nature and limit the space for investments and other public services.
In parallel with this trend, the report also highlights the high dependence of the municipality on central budget transfers. Revenues from transfers to local government units result in considerable levels, exceeding 600 million lekë, which shows that a large part of the financial functioning of the Municipality of Saranda relies on funds coming from the central government and not on revenues generated at the local level.
According to the report, the combination of increased personnel costs with a strong dependence on budgetary transfers creates a risky financial profile, where own resources are not sufficient to cope with the expansion of costs, while the space for investment and service improvement remains limited.
Likewise, according to the audit, one of the most problematic cases is related to the failure to reflect in the financial statements a total area of 5,133.81 hectares transferred to the ownership of the municipality, including 430.9 ha of forests and 783.3 ha of pastures. This has led to an inaccurate reflection of the account "Forests, pastures, plantations", which at the end of 2024 is presented at a value of 83,323,719 lek, without really reflecting all the property owned.
Under these conditions, according to the SAI, an accurate overview of the accounting situation is not provided and comparison with the physical situation during the inventory becomes impossible, compromising the reliability of the Statement of Financial Position and making it impossible to provide a complete opinion on these assets.
The SAI finds that no committees have been established to verify these assets and no report has been drafted on the physical inventory, which should include an assessment of the physical condition, the quality of preservation and the identification of possible differences.
Meanwhile, during 2024, 13 ownership certificates were received for pasture and forest assets, but these were not reflected in the accounting in the relevant account, further deepening the inaccuracies in reporting.
To correct this situation, the SAI recommends that the responsible municipal structures, in cooperation with the economic and legal departments, take measures to identify and register properties with ownership certificates, as well as to carry out asset valuations through licensed experts, so that these assets are accurately recorded in accounting and reflected correctly in the financial statements. /ekofin.al/
