IMF on concession: “Caution, there could be budget costs”

18/01/2016 15:25

Due to the lack of funds, governments have recently preferred to give
several public services to private concessions or other public-private
partnership forms.

A recent report of the IMF shows that Albania has signed at least 55 agreements of the public and private partnership.

Although these agreemients don’t require public investments, citizens will pay for them sooner or later.

In many concessions, the government has undertaken to compensate private operators if they don’t reached the planned profit. And the cost is rapidly increasing.

According to the IMF, only with 55 concessions signed so far, the budget has created obligations mounting up to 7% of the GDP.

2% of this comes from the concession of scanning in customs. 1% of the GDP comes from the check-up concession. There will be obligations for other agreements, such as the landfill of Elbasan, Rruga e Arbrit and the Durres-Kukes concession.

Passing a series of services to private operators as a public-private partnership, is not a new concern for the IMF.

This institution has requested even before more care with these agreements. According to them, many of these agreements hide public debt and later might create higher costs for the country’s finances.

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