BRATISLAVA, May 11, (WEBNOVINY) — According to the think tank Institute of Economic and Social Studies INESS, in the election year of 2010, the government spent approximately 484 million euro ineffectively. This number is the total of all cases of ineffective spending that the media reported last year. “The total of 484 million euro includes, for example, rewards that were paid in loss-producing state-run companies, the funds wasted in so-called social businesses, which Slovakia must pay back to the EU and many cases of waste and ineffective spending of our money in purchasing wares and services by the state,” writes the INESS blog. The state wasted 356 million euro on average every year since the project was launched in 2007.
INESS stated that the amount of funds wasted in 2010 is almost identical to the volume of resources used for secondary education. It also equals half of the MoD budget. “A meaningful reduction in payroll levies for employees by 1 point according to the currently proposed reform would cause public funds to lose approximately 200 million euro. In the event that waste is eliminated, there would be space for 2 percentage points [payroll levies] reduction without a shortfall in public funds,” underlines INESS.
The sum of cases from the category ‘clientelism,’ revealed in 2010, reached almost 102 million euro, which is less than the average annual 134 million since the project’s launch. According to the summary, these were suspicious tenders in the Education and Defense Ministries, in the activities of the Slovak Land Fund and the contracts of the Cabinet Office, which are currently being examined by the police. There was also clientelism at the municipal and local governmental levels.
INESS has also been watching the lawsuits of the state and of the public administration. “The cases of closed lawsuits that the media presented in the last four years have cost us altogether 105 million euro,” disclosed the institute. There were also cases in which either corrective action was taken or which were aborted when Slovak media started focusing on them. The overall cost of clientelism- or waste-related cases were prevented from completion thanks to the media was some 380 million euro.
The INESS database contains 530 documented cases of wasting public funds and clientelism which the printed media revealed since 2007. The objective of the project is to track all problematic actions by representatives of the state in spending taxpayers‘ money.
SITA
