I will demand from the members of the Democratic People's Party (DNP) to oppose this proposal by the Government, so that if they have already decided to give the airport under concession, and we see that they have, then they are not denying us the right to the compensation that is due to us, and I hope that all members of the Parliament will oppose this kind of ad hoc proposal that harms municipalities.
This was told to "Vijesti" by the mayor of Zeta Municipality. Mihailo Asanović regarding the Government's proposed amendment to the recently prepared Proposal for Amendments to the Law on Financing Local Self-Government, which requires that municipalities in whose territories the state grants concessions for airports, ports and roads, instead of 70 percent, be given only 20 percent of the concession fee that the state takes from the lessee.
"While the government is trying to do this with Zeta and Tivat, we have a situation where beaches in Ulcinj are not allowed to be leased to the tenants who received them, they are ready to protect them from foreign influence, and we have no influence on the concession that the government plans to implement. I must say that this is a double standard and we will defend the interests of Zeta and will not allow laws to be changed in this way that are directly to our detriment," Asanović said.
He also called on other councilor clubs from Zeta to call on their representatives in the state parliament to oppose this decision because, as he emphasized, this is directly aimed against the interests of the Municipality of Zeta.
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The Law on Concessions stipulates that concession income is divided between the budget of the Government and the municipality on whose territory the subject of the concession is located, according to the percentages determined by the Law on Financing Local Self-Government. According to the current Law on Financing Local Self-Government, 70% of the income that the state generates by granting a concession of a good of general interest, which explicitly includes airports, is assigned to the municipality on whose territory the good is located, “except for income from the concession fee for the use of the port, of which 50% is assigned to the municipality in which the port that is the subject of the concession is located”.
The Government's amendments, if adopted by the parliamentary majority, will now mostly "fall on the backs" of Tivat and Zeta, but they will also directly financially harm municipalities in which seaports have been given concessions, such as Kotor, Herceg Novi and Bar, and in the future, all those municipalities through which highways or expressways that would be built under the concession system will pass.
In the tender launched in 2019, the state requested a minimum one-time concession fee of 100 million euros from the future airport lessee, a minimum 10 percent share in the annual revenues generated as a variable part of the concession fee, and investments of at least 200 million euros. This means that under the current legal solutions, Tivat and Zeta would receive 70 million euros (35 million euros each) of the one-time concession fee, and the state would receive only 30 million. The same ratio (70 to 30 percent in favor of the municipalities) would also be used in the division of the annual variable concession fee. If the government's amendments are adopted, from the one-time concession fee, if the tender process were to be completed according to the previously minimum required conditions, Tivat and Zeta would thus receive only 20 million euros together, instead of 70 million euros.
The President of the Municipality of Tivat told "Vijesti" the day before yesterday that such proposed changes for the Municipality of Tivat and the Municipality of Zeta are totally unacceptable and that the local administration will officially declare itself and present its positions and arguments to the public in the coming days.
The tender commission for the procedure for awarding the concession for the right to use the Podgorica and Tivat airports, of which Komnenović is a member, made a unanimous decision to extend the deadline for submitting bids within the second phase of the procedure until May 7.
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