Democracy Plus (D+) has monitored the publication of contracts in five municipalities: Obiliq, Shtime, Fushë Kosova, Kamenica and Podujeva. The monitored contracts date between 1^st of January 2019 until 31^st of October 2019.

D+ findings show that the level of published contracts in e-procurement is pleasing. Kamenica and Fushë Kosova have the highest percentage of published contracts, with 93% and 95% respectively. Shtime ranks lower than the two, with 85% of contracts being published, Obiliq publishes 55% of signed contracts, while Podujeva due to the high number of published contracts lacking the pricing list, 65 in total, ranks as the municipality with the lowest percentage of contracts being published, with approximately 20%.

As for publishing the contracts in the municipalities’ official websites, seeing how this is not required by the law, the level of transparency is lower. Fushe Kosova and Obiliq have changed the dates of publication, which accounts for tampering with data, hence it cannot be considered as transparency. Shtime stands at 21%, a low percentage of publishing the contracts, however they are quick in publishing the contracts, often posting them on the same day as the contracts are signed. And Podujeva publishes most of its contract without the pricing list, hence those contracts can not be counted as “published”, therefore this municipality stands at a very low level of publishing contracts, at only 15%.

Unpublished contacts, delays in publishing contracts, and interfering with the dates of publications in the two mentioned municipalities, can be attributed to the lack of communication between the Public Procurement office and the IT office. However, it is the public procurement office’s responsibility to publish the contracts in the e-procurement platform, as it is responsible for publishing all other relevant documents in this platform.

Some of D+ recommendations are:

• All municipalities must assure that the contracts are being published within two days of them being signed – both in the e-procurement platform, but also in the municipalities’ official websites; they must pay more attention to the publication of the contracts in their official websites so that there won’t be huge differences between the two platforms;
• Shtime and Obiliq must name the contracts with the name of public procurement’s activity in their official websites. In e-procurement you can search the contracts with their name and key words, however in their website the full, correct name is required;
• Podujeva must include the pricing list in the published contracts, since without it the contracts are useless to the interested parties, and they do not fulfill the legal requirements;
• Kamenica must assure a quicker publication of contracts, since in some cases by the time the contracts were published, the job had already been done.