The Program and Law on Economic Recovery: Transparency and criteria applied during the implementation process

06/04/2021

GAP Institute today published the report on transparency and criteria used during the implementation of measures under the  Program and Law on Economic Recovery. The findings of this report indicate that the institutions responsible for the implementation of these measures have not been transparent during the distribution of funds, where for several measures the lists of beneficiaries were not published, while in several other measures the amount of the provided financial assistance was not disclosed. In addition, the criteria for the implementation of these measures were designed in a way that they didn’t take into account the impact from the pandemic for benefiting the financial assistance.

The findings of this report indicate that the distribution of funds under the economic recovery program led to businesses benefiting proportionally, despite that some economic sectors, such as information, healthcare, and manufacturing industries had a real growth during the pandemic of up to 30%. For other measures, implementing institutions took arbitrary decisions, without an analysis, to allocate the entire fund of the measure to only one group of citizens or businesses. Also, the Law on Economic Recovery exempted all operators of the sector from royalties for five months, despite the data from the Independent Commission for Mines and Minerals, indicated through the collection of revenues from royalties, showed no decrease of economic activity during 2020 in this sector. The government also decided to subsidize the tariff of electricity generated by renewable sources for three months for all citizens and businesses, despite that a large number of citizens worked continuously throughout the pandemic, as did over 80 thousand employees in the public sector, a large part of the civil society, private sector, etc

The report recommends that in order for the impact of the distributed aid to be greater, the distribution of funds should be transparent and focused only to those that need it

The full report can be found by clicking HERE.

Infographics can be found HERE.