Year after year, the national budget increases its concentration at the end of the year, which shows a lack of skills to manage and implement the budget law.

According to official data from the Ministry of Finance, 33% of the annual budget is expected to be allocated in the last two months of the year.

From January to October, a total of Lek 517 billion was spent, while the annual plan amounts to Lek 771 billion, according to official data. In the last two months of the year, Lek 254 billion (Euro 2.5 billion, or 33% of the total budget) remains to be spent.

The state budget has experienced a good fiscal period from the increase in incomes as a result of the positive performance of the economy. Economic growth and employment expansion have helped boost incomes at double-digit rates in the past two years.

However, a sharp problem is emerging in terms of public spending. Public entities fail to realize the spending program according to the objectives that have been approved by law in the Parliament of Albania.

The non-realizations are leading to changes several times a year in the budget with normative acts, reallocating funds from items that are not realized to others that move faster.

A detailed table with the progress of annual investments in 2024 shows that the weakest allocation in capital investments is in education, where at the end of the year not even a third of the funds have been spent at the pre-university level. Since this part of the investments is the responsibility of the local government, they fail to be realized according to the program.

Also, investments in the local government have performed very poorly. The Supreme State Audit in an inspection at the Ministry of Finance verified deficiencies and incompetence of the staff in liquidity management.

The concentration of expenses at the end of the year indicates a lack of effectiveness in the use of taxes. ALSAI has verified that almost 20 percent of the 2023 budget has been allocated in the first two months of 2024.

In addition to deficiencies in the design of projects and their implementation according to planning, procurement officers are reluctant to sign for fear of involving investigations from the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the general public expenditures, for the 10-month period of 2024, reached about Lek 517 billion, with a realization of 91.7% of the plan for the period, while compared to the same period of 2023, this item resulted in 7.1% higher or about Lek 33 billion more. In annual terms, the general expenses for the 10th month of 2024 were realized to the extent of 70.1% of the annual plan according to the initial budget and 67.0% of the annual plan according to Normative Act no. 3 date 28.08.2024.