The non-governmental organizations "Matica Boke" and "Miholjski zbor" from Tivat requested yesterday the urgent scheduling of an extraordinary session of the Tivat Municipal Assembly regarding the intention of the Government of Montenegro, in the wake of the now almost certain concession of the Tivat and Podgorica airports, drastically to the detriment of the municipalities of Tivat and Zeta, to change legal regulations and significantly reduce the revenues of local self-governments from the concession arrangement for airports located in the territory of Tivat and Zeta.
The cabinet of Prime Minister Milojko Spajić (PES) has adopted a proposal for amendments to the recently prepared Proposal for Amendments to the Law on Financing Local Self-Government. The amendments require that municipalities in whose territories the state grants concessions for airports, ports and roads be given only 70 percent of the concession fee that the state collects from the lessee, instead of 20 percent.
"This amendment amends the legal solution relating to the percentage of revenue transfer based on concession fees for the use of airports, ports and roads in order to adequately distribute this revenue, taking into account the specificities of the subject of the concession," the Government stated in the explanation of its initiative, without explaining, however, what "specificities of the subject of the concession" justify such a drastic taking of municipalities' revenues for the benefit of the state treasury.
The Law on Concessions, by the way, stipulates that concession income is divided between the budget of the Government and local governments on whose territory the subject of the concession is located, according to the percentages established by the Law on Financing Local Self-Government. According to the current Law on Financing Local Self-Government, as well as the Proposal for Amendments to that Law, 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 of Prime Minister Spajić has now unexpectedly, in the very final stages of the procedure for the possible leasing of the airport, which has been going on for over five years, decided to drastically "change the rules of the game" to the detriment of the local governments of Tivat and Zeta and to drastically cut these two municipalities off from working with the future airport manager.
The Government's amendments, if adopted by the parliamentary majority, will now fall mostly on the backs of Tivat and Zeta, but they will also directly financially harm municipalities in which seaports have been granted concessions, such as Kotor, Herceg Novi and Bar, and in the future, all municipalities through which highways or expressways built under the concession system will pass.
The NGO "Matica Boke" and "Miholjski Zbor" announced yesterday that they are urgently requesting the scheduling of an extraordinary session of the local parliament due to these intentions of the Government. They said that "just when we thought that with the removal of the pestilential-centralist DPS government, things would get better for Tivat and Boka Kotorska in terms of decentralization and regionalization", the current central government is trying to dissuade us from this, but also to strengthen our efforts to achieve one of the most important program goals and tasks of the NGO Matica Boke - the Tivat branch, which is also joined by the NGO Miholjski Zbor, which is a high degree of economic autonomy for Boka".
"We are forced to address the public of Tivat and Boka Kotorska due to the latest attack on the budget of the Municipality of Tivat, which is reflected in the amendment to the Law on Financing Local Self-Government, which attempts to reduce the income from concessions from the current 70% in favor of the local self-government - the Municipality of Tivat, to 20%, i.e. for the central government to collect the 'local cream' in the amount of 80% in favor of the state treasury. Specifically, this means that if Tivat Airport were given under concession, and we have information that this is already a finished story, for the amount of 50 million euros, according to the current law, 35 million euros would flow into the budget of the Municipality of Tivat, i.e. more than this year's total city budget. If the Government amendment were adopted, which changes the ratio to 80% in favor of the state and 20% to the municipality, that amount would be only 10 million euros, i.e. 25 million euros less, while the central government would collect 40 million euros from the Tivat airport," they explained. from these two NGOs, telling the people of Tivat to imagine what could be done in their city and how the living conditions of citizens and the business environment of Tivat could be improved with the money that the government now intends to take away from the municipality.
Matica Boke and Miholjski zbor point out that the municipality of Zeta is now facing the same problem, which is why these two NGOs have asked the Government to withdraw the controversial amendment to the Law on Financing Local Self-Government from the parliamentary procedure.
They recalled the genesis of the Tivat airport, which was built in the early 2003s on agricultural land in Mrčevac, which the people of Tivat largely voluntarily gave up in favor of the Municipality of Tivat, so that its local "Airport Services Company" would first build a small and modest airport with a grass runway, and later, in the late XNUMXs, in cooperation with JAT and the Federal Civil Aviation Administration of the SFRY, the current modern Tivat airport. They pointed out that even before Montenegro purchased the airports in Tivat and Golubovci from JAT in XNUMX, "there are documents indicating that the Municipality of Tivat was the owner of a significant part of the land at the airport."
"According to data from 2000, the Municipality of Tivat was the owner of about 45% of the total of just over a million square meters that encompass the airport and its protective belt. In April 2003, ownership of Tivat Airport was transferred from JAT Airways to Aerodrome Crne Gore, the Municipality of Tivat and its property are not mentioned by anyone, nor has the then local DPS government, with its satellites, tried to do anything about it. After the dissolution of the state union of Serbia and Montenegro, the share of the Municipality of Tivat in Tivat Airport is not mentioned again. Private property in the area of the Airport has also never been fully resolved. The fees for the confiscated land, which were paid at that time, were paid exclusively from the budget of the Municipality of Tivat," Matica Boke and Miholjski zbor reminded, adding that the Government of Montenegro, in preparation for the concession, has in the past few years begun to magically transfer hundreds of thousands of square meters of land owned by the city of Tivat to itself in the cadastre, which is located in the immediate vicinity. the contact zone of the local airport.
"Because of all the above, we believe that the responsible approach to this potentially major problem, and a possible generator of serious tensions and protests, would be to schedule an extraordinary session of the Tivat Municipal Assembly, as an urgent procedure, at which all actors of the Tivat political scene, as representatives of citizens, would express their views on this issue and adopt an appropriate act that would clearly define the position of the Tivat Municipal Assembly on this problem, with which the Parliament and the Government of Montenegro would be informed," concludes the statement of Matica Boka - Tivat branch and Miholjski zbor, signed by the presidents of the Boards of the two NGOs, Ivan Starčević and Zdravko Nišavić.
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