Shkodra Municipality financial performance diagnosis according to PEFA instrument And Implications on future reforms in the organic law and local finances

On Monday March 30th, in Shkodra, members of the public administration of Shkodra Municipality, members of the Competency Centre, representatives of national institutions (Finance Ministry) and field experts (members of the working group for the review of the Organic Law), as well as representatives of related programs dealing with local government issues (PLGP/USAID and their partner LGUs), gathered to be informed and validate findings on the Shkodra Municipality financial performance and to discuss the expected changes of the legal framework regulating the functioning and financing of the local government.

The findings and preliminary results of the draft-report were shared with Shkodra Municipality experts and Competency Centre experts, who expressed themselves on these issues. A detailed report, presenting the standards inspired by PEFA and the results from the evaluation for each of indicators, will be concluded in Albanian and will be shared with Shkodra Municipality experts for further comments. PEFA is a World Bank instrument to measure the performance of government in managing finances and accountability. Such a report is used to measure the performance of the Albanian Government in 2006 and 2011, while it is the first time that it is to be used in local level in Albania. 

In the second part of the meeting, discussions took place on how can the findings of the report be used to review the legal framework. Also, there were presented some preliminary findings of the report about the regulation of functions allocation, and possibilities and challenges of the local governance. LGU experts participated actively and gave their opinions on changes to be made in the Organic Law.