Surprising absolutely no-one, the State Audit Office announces disappointing results of local government units property management skills.
They have about 17,000 employees, including 806 high-ranking officials, but only 32 out of 576 local government units have efficiently managed the properties they own – plots of land, business premises and housing accommodation. These are the results of the audits done by the State Audit Office which included all the counties, cities and municipalities, reports Poslovni.hr on March 28, 2016.
The properties have been efficiently managed in only seven counties, 19 cities and six municipalities, and that list does not include Croatia’s largest cities – Zagreb, Rijeka, Split, Osijek or Zadar, reveals the audit report which covers the period from 2012 to 2014. As far as counties are concerned, the best marks were given to the following counties: Karlovac, Koprivnica-Križevci, Međimurje, Primorje-Gorski Kotar, Virovitica-Podravina, Vukovar-Srijem and Zagreb.
It is impressive to see the number of properties which were owned by local government units at the end of 2014 – they owned almost 22,500 business premises, 18,400 apartments and 338 million square metres of land. These properties earned them 2.8 billion kuna.
The audit revealed a series of mistakes in managing the properties. Some local units, for example, did not have information about the actual state of their property, they had not found a purpose for their properties, they had not established a system for recording incomes and expenditures for each property, certain premises were leased without a public tender and without a lease agreement. Also, at the end of 2014, about 3,500 business premises (15 percent) and nearly 2,000 apartments had not been put to use. The audit found that some local government units owned their own premises, but did not use them and had simultaneously leased or purchase other premises.
The data show that on 31 December 2014, the local government units owned property and assets worth as much as 112 billion kuna, which was 4.4 billion kuna more than at the beginning of the year. On the same date, the local units employed 17,074 people, including 806 high-ranking officials – municipal mayors, town mayors and county prefects and their deputies. The largest number of officials was found in Split-Dalmatia (91) and Primorje-Gorski Kotar (61) counties, and the smallest number in Požega-Slavonia (19) and Virovitica-Podravina (20) counties.
