Incinerator concession projects stall on investment/ Brussels is concerned

16 Tetor 2020, 14:21, English CNA

A report by the Ministry of Finance states that the incinerators in Tirana and Fier have failed to realize the promised investments during 2018 and 2019. The two projects have raised concerns in Brussels for violating the principles of the European Union for waste management.

Some of the biggest concession projects of the ?Rama? government seem to be late with the investment plan, according to data published by the government itself. The Tirana incinerator company should have invested 11.6 billion Lek (93 million euros) for the period 2018-2019 under the concession contract, but has invested in reality only 1.7 billion Lek, or only 14 per cent of the contract.

?The actual value of the capital investment for 2018, was only 20 percent of the value planned in the business plan. The reason that led to the non-realization of the investment value, was the long time of obtaining the construction permit in the CRT for the constituent facilities of the plant.

While the value of capital investment for 2019 was 526.2 million Lek, reads in the report of the Ministry of Finance, which has begun to be prepared as a form of transparency on the controversial concession projects undertaken by the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama, which are contracts that will weigh on the pockets of Albanians for the next 30 years, and that have generally been awarded through controversial procurement procedures.
In total, for both the years 2018 and 2019, the company has not made 9.9 billion Lek or 80 million euros of investments provided in the contract. In 2018, 20 per cent of the planned investments were realized, while in 2019, only 8.9 per cent.

The Sharra Incinerator is a project of Integrated Energy BV SPV, a company registered in Tirana as a subsidiary of a company named Integrated Energy BV, registered in the Netherlands. The final owners of this company are unknown. The company is registered in Tirana with a share capital of 100.000 Lek, while its balance sheet data for 2018 show that it had 1.16 billion Lek income and 29.2 million Lek net profits, with a rate of return on share capital of 292 times bigger.

The report of the Ministry of Finance, expressed less clearly in terms of the progress of the other incineration project, that of Fier. The state budget has paid for this project since 2017, and is expected to pay by 2023 a total of 4.5 billion Lek (about 37 million euros), but it is not clear from the report, what percentage of planned investments have been realized./CNA.al