13 May EITI – OSCE: First Inter-municipal Workshop with Local Government on Royalty issues
The EITI and the OSCE Presence organized on May 9th in the Municipality of Roskovec, the First Inter-municipal Workshop with a thematic: The Royalty impact on Local Communities.
Representatives of the Secretariat and MSG EITI-Albania, OSCE Mission, representatives of Fier Municipalities, Roskovec, Patos, representatives of the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Finance and Economy, Ministry of Health and Social Support, AKBN, experts and specialists of the sector, etc. participated on the workshop.
In the moderation of the event and the speech held at the Workshop, the Director of the EITI Secretariat, Mr. Ardit Kamberi addressed the issues related to:
Transparency in the Royalty Management; Distributing and maximizing the social and environmental impact of the royalty in the beneficiary communities; Strengthening local capacities in the view of legal instrument’s use for harvesting; Discussing more scenarios for reviewing the Royalty distribution formula.
Mayor of Roskovec Municipality, mrs. Majlinda Bufi in her speech highlighted the issues related to the coordination regarding the time and value profitability of the Royalty, as well as the reconciliation between the Municipalities in the function of this process.
Representatives of Fier and Patos Municipalities presented the value of revenues generated by the Royalty in these Municipalities and discussed with the MFE representative regarding the calculation and minimization of the delays caused by the Royalty distribution as well as concrete proposals for optimizing this process.
The General Director of Agency for the Support of Local Self-Government, mr. Murati introduced the process initiated by the Albanian Government for designing a Long-term Platform, for the Development of extractives industries and processing areas through an Inter-Ministerial Working Group.
The OSCE representative, Mr. Qëndro presented to the workshop, inter-municipal co-operation issues related to the royalty distribution at the local level.
During the Workshop, session presentations were also made by the representatives of MSG EITI – Civil Society, the State Agency for the Rights and Protection of Children, as well as the experts contracted by the OSCE, regarding the best practices of local level cooperation.
In this context, the EITI and the OSCE Presence will organize three other Workshops at the local level, with Municipalities where there are extractive industries and processing activities, to finalize the process at the National Conference with representatives of Local Government.