Centre for Civic Education (CCE) received from the Ministry of Finance, in addition to data on net salaries and other compensations that are required for the CCE research “How much managers within the state administration bodies earned in 2012?”, also the information on compensations that managing persons from this Ministry received on the basis of their membership in various boards.
The project “How much managers within the state administration bodies earned in 2012?” has been designed in the framework of the CCE subprogram Accountability and Transparency of authorities in order to contribute to raising awareness about responsible spending from the Budget of Montenegro. In this regard, the specific objective of this project was to determine the amount of money that managers in the state administration organs have acquired during performance of their duties in 2012, as well as any other additional compensation for the same period at the expense of the budget of Montenegro. This information was collected by CCE, pursuant to the provisions of the Free Access to Information Law, from 3 June until 25 July 2013, and publicized at the press conference held on 26 July 2013. The project itself has initially included 45 state bodies, 4 of which did not provide the requested information (originally it was 6, but the Ministry of Finance has sent a complete data 21.08.2013, the Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs has sent a complete data 29.08.2013, giving at the same time a public announcement). CCE yesterday received a decision from the Ministry of Education and Sports that this Ministry will provide information upon payment of administrative fee by the CCE, which should soon result with the research that will have data from all ministries.
Ministry of Finance, which was originally on the “black list” of transparency, changed its position, when it comes to this research, by providing all the required information which the CCE integrally published https://cgo-cce.org/en/2013/08/23/dva-ministarstva-i-dalje-kriju-podatke-o-primanjima-rukovodilaca-u-2012/
In addition, this Ministry has submitted to the CCE the information on how much its officials earned during the 2012, in addition to the salaries and compensations in the working groups and similar, from the managing boards in which they were members. These data were not explicitly requested by the CCE from any authority, and therefore these will not be calculated in the final report. Still, the CCE share the information with the public assessing that it is the public interest. Namely, when these figures are added to those already published for this Ministry, one can get a more complete picture about incomes of the managers, which are not only from the Budget of Montenegro, but are obtained based on the public functions that they occupy.
According to the received data, former Minister of Finance Milorad Katnić and his Assistant Ana Ivanović did not have membership in any of the managing boards (MB), whereas Assistant Minister Biljana Šćekić was member of the MB of MIPA (Montenegro Investment Promotion Agency), but did not receive any compensation on that basis.
It was something better for Assistant Minister Nataša Kovačević who earned 275 EUR per month as a compensation for the position of the President of the MB of Restitution Fund, Tijana Stanković who earned 430 EUR per month as compensation for membership in the MB of «Pobjeda» (the letter states that the payments are late over 10-months and compensation on that basis have not yet been paid for a couple of months of 2012, as well as that Stanković is from January 2013 not a member of this MB), then Secretary of the Ministry Damir Rašketić who, as member of the MB of IDF received 480 EUR per month during the 2012 and Assistant Minister Ana Krsmanović, who from 30 March 2012 was member of the MB of Railway Transport of Montenegro getting 505 EUR per month.
Much better were with these incomes Assistant Minister Nemanja Pavličić who, as a member of the Flight Control Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro, received the average monthly compensation of 730 EUR (the fee was paid every six months), Assistant Minister Boris Bušković who, as a member of MB of Elektroprivreda of Montenegro received 740 EUR per month, and Assistant Minister Bojana Bošković, which monthly compensation for the membership in the MB of Deposit Protection Fund by June 2012 was 766.90 EUR and from June to December 480 EUR per month.
CCE welcomes the decision of the Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs to submit and make public information concerning incomes of managerial personnel, as well as the announcement of the Ministry of Education and Sports to finally provide the requested information. CCE believes that joint efforts of non-governmental sector and the media, which give adequate attention to these issues, contribute to greater extent of transparency of state bodies and development of much-needed awareness that authorities should be transparent in spending taxpayers’ money.
CCE will, upon collecting data from the Ministry of Education and Sports, process all the received information and publish a final report.
Vladimir Vučković
Programme Assistant