FLASH NEWS
The budget has money but does not spend; Record funds, but allocations at a 10-year minimum
2026-05-26 08:27:40 / EKONOMI&SOCIALE
The capital investment fund from the budget is at an all-time historical record with an amount of 162.3 billion lek or about 1.7 billion euros in 2026, but in the first 4 months, allocations were at the lowest level since 2016.
Official data from the Ministry of Finance shows that in the first 4 months, 14.8 billion lek were allocated in the form of public investments. This was the lowest level in the last 10 years, 5.7 percent less than the same period in 2025, which also marked a weak year in this regard.
While the government has approved the largest investment budget ever, the contraction of the first months signals massive allocations in December and the premise for a lack of efficiency, as has already been verified in many projects by SPAK.
Experts from the Ministry of Finance have explained that the main reason is related to administrative red tape and delays in public procurement processes. Although the budget is approved at the end of the previous year, contracting institutions often start preparing tenders, drafting terms of reference and announcing competitions only during the first months of the new year. For fear of SPAK investigations, the procedures become even more bureaucratic. Due to the deadlines for appeals and evaluations, the first contracts only start to be signed around May or June, the same sources said.
A large part of the tenders are failing or being canceled because the projects have technical errors. The biggest failure is in foreign funds, in which only 50 percent of the plan has been implemented in 4 months. Of the 6.2 billion lek programmed, only 3.2 billion lek were disbursed. A good part of the projects depend on foreign financing, where the procedures for disbursing funds from donors or international banks go through stricter control filters.
Foreign banks have extremely strict rules on human rights and the environment. They do not allocate a single penny if the Albanian state has not completed 100% expropriation of the lands where the project will pass. Most foreign grants or loans are conditioned by the fact that the Albanian government must pay VAT or a part of the cost from the state budget (co-financing).
If we do not withdraw these funds according to the schedule (due to delays in the first quarter), the Albanian state pays a fine called a commitment commission for the money that remains in foreign bank accounts, paying interest on money that we have not yet used.
This artificial impasse, which is repeated in an even more aggressive form over the years, has created the phenomenon of spending being concentrated at the end of the year. In order not to burn through funds, institutions begin to make large payments in an accelerated manner during the months of November and December.
This accumulation of large expenditures within a short period of time often compromises the quality of field work and increases the risk of abuse or poor monitoring of contracts. Furthermore, systematic delays extend the deadlines for the delivery of public works, making citizens wait for years for projects that should have been completed within a few months./Monitor
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