PPP incinerators, Financial Support from the State Budget over the years, 2015-2024

Open Data Albania is conducting a research regarding the financial support that the State Budget provided, over the years, for PPP Concession Contracts in the Waste Management sector.

More specifically, the following ones:

1. Building of the landfill, incinerator and rehabilitation of existing landfills in Tirana, implemented by Integrated Energy BV SPV sh.p.k.

2. Building, operation and transfer of the incinerator for the processing urban waste in the Municipality of Fier, implemented by Integrated Technology Waste Treatment Fier sh.p.k

3. Building, operation and transfer of the incinerator for the processing urban waste in the Municipality of Elbasan, implemented by Albtek Energy sh.p.k.

Over the years, there has been an increase in the allotment of payments from the State Budget towards these three concession contracts.

In 2021, based on data retrieved from Open Spending Albania, it emerges that the financial support from the State Budget towards the three incinerators is a total of 1.97 billion Lek, or about 15.9% of all concession contracts costs planned with budget support (13 of such). In relation to the Gross Domestic Product, it amounts to around 0.12% of the expected annual GDP.

Regarding the annual predictions, for 2022 an installment of around 13.8 billion Lek for all concessions with budget support, is foreseen, of which about 2.2 billion Lek will cover the Tirana and Fier Incinerator Concession Contracts. 

Source: Open Spending.al, OpenCorporates.al, Ministry of Finance and Economy
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania

From 2015-2017, 1.51 billion Lek were allocated from the State Budget in favor of the PPP concession Building, Operation and Transfer of the incinerator for processing of urban waste in the Municipality of Elbasan.

With the signing of two other concession contracts for the Construction of Tirana and Fier Incinerators, there is an augmention in the share of budget spending in support of Concessions in the field of waste management, against the total budget spending for PPP Concessions with budget support.

The largest increase is observed in 2020, where 27.1% of the total spending from the State Budget for PPP concessions, were on behalf of the three concessions in the field of waste management, namely for the construction of Incinerators.

Below you’ll find detailed information on the object, fees, obligations and Budget Spending for each of the contracts:

Building of the landfill, incinerator and rehabilitation of existing landfills in Tirana, signed on 31.08.2017 between the Ministry of Environment (presently within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy and the Municipality of Tirana) and Integrated Energy BV SPV sh.p.k, with a 30 year duration, until 2047).

This concession contract is in the form of BOT (Build Operate Transfer), ie Building, Transferring of ownership and Operation to the Municipality of Tirana at the end of the Concession Contract. The value of the Investment for the project and all its components, as per the Concession Contract is 128,248,330 Euros without VAT or about 17.1 billion Lek. Meanwhile, the Full Value of the Contract, which means the Budget Fund that the state plans to spend in favor of the Concessionaire is about 34.1 billion Lek, according to the Budget Report 2020. For the 2018-2021 period, about 4.5 billion Lek have been liquidated from the State Budget, with about 29.6 billion lek still to be payed.

Source: Open Spending.al, OpenCorporates.al, Ministry of Finance and Economy
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania

To the benefit of the concession, 62.4 million ALL were payed by other budgetary institutions, mostly from the Municipality of Kavaja (ALL 46.8 million) and the Municipality of Durres (ALL 15.4 million) for landfill waste disposal.

Source: Open Spending.al, OpenCorporates.al, Ministry of Finance and Economy
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania

In keeping with the Concession Contract, (Article 7.1.2), the concessionaire collects revenue consisting of:

1. Monthly fees that local units of Tirana District will pay in favor of the concessionaire, equal to 29 euros without VAT for a ton of urban waste being deposited. This fee is indexed with the inflation rate each year.

The guaranteed minimum of waste to be deposited on the landfill was settled at 200,750 tons per year or 550 tons per day. In any case, where the amount of waste deposited is less than the minimum required, the Municipality of Tirana has a contractual obligation to pay the Concessionaire the difference.

2. The revenue from the sale of the electricity, produced by the waste processing plant.

The price set for the sale of the energy produced is 70 euro/MWh. In the feasibility study, 4 plants are expected to be built. The first plant will be completed in the fifth month of the second year of construction and starting this month will be operational in power generation. Meanwhile, the second plant will finish in the 9th month of the third year of construction. The third plant will finish in the first month in the fifth year of operation. The fourth plant is planned to finish in the fifth month of the sixth year of operation and, starting this month, will be operational in power generation. However, according to the 2020 Annual Report of the Ministry of Finance, the incinerator has not yet built, due to the failure to provide a construction permit. The building permit was obtained on 24.11.2020.

3. Revenue from recycling materials, a service worth 70 euro/ MWh as per the feasibility study.

Based on its financial statements, only in 2020, the concession company received, in the form of budget charges per amount of waste and from other activities (such as material recycling, as energy production is not yet realized), a total of ALL 2.30 billion, of which 1.28 billion from the State Budget and 1.02 billion from recycling materials.

Source: Open Spending.al, OpenCorporates.al, Ministry of Finance and Economy *For more information please refer to the excel document
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania

Meanwhile, as the plant is not yet operational, it appears that the Concession company has not yet paid a concession fee in favor of the Albanian state, which under Article 7.1.3 of the contract is predicted in the amount of 2.1% of the quantity of electricity produced by the Waste Processing Plant. As long as no energy is produced, this is considered revenue missing from the State Budget.

PPP Concession Contract Building, Operation and Transfer of the Incinerator for the urban waste processing in the Municipality of Fier was concluded on October 24, 2016 between the Ministry of Environment (today in the Jurisdiction of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy) and Integrated Technology Waste Treatment Fier sh.p.k, for a duration of 6 years.

This concession contract is in the form of BOT (ie Build, Operate and Transfer) and will be implemented with Financial Support from the State Budget.

In line with information present in the Annexes in the PPP Concession Contract ‘Economic feasibility of the project’, the Albanian Government will repay the investor the full value of the Plant (investment value) of 32,831,440 Euros with VAT or about 4.51 billion Lek for a period of 6 years. The Financial Support from the Albanian Government is realized through monthly installments of 455,992.8 Euros with VAT.

According to the data in the 2020 Budget Report, the Ministry of Finance and Economy has  unveiled the full value of the contract (which means the total Payments to be made by the State Budget), estimated at about 4.51 billion.

Meanwhile, for the 2018-2021 period, about 2.95 billion Lek from the State Budget have been allocated towards this Concession Contract. So, the Albanian Government has the obligation to liquidate another 1.56 billion Lek, an amount to be paid by the Albanian taxpayers.

In addition to direct revenues from the Albanian Government, the Concession Contract stipulates that the Concessionaire will receive operating revenues, from the production and sale of energy to KESH sh.a., as well as projected revenues from the sale of scrap metals and plastics.

On 11.09.2020 an Agreement was signed between the parties which consisted in the extension, by nine months, of the deadline for the completion of the construction of the urban waste treatment plant, until for March 31, 2021. However, ever since, there hasn’t been other official information on weather the Plant has been completed or started power generation.

PPP Concession Contract Construction, Operation and Transferring of the incinerator for the urban waste processing in the Municipality of Elbasan was concluded on December 16, 2014 between the Ministry of Environment (today in the Jurisdiction of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy) and Albtek Energy sh.p.k, for a duration of 7 years (so, the contract is scheduled to last until the end of 2021).

This concession contracts is of the BOT form (Build-Operate-Transfer; pra, Ndërto, Opero dhe Transfero).

The total value of the contract unveiled by the Ministry of Finance and Economy in the 2020 Budget Report is about 4.63 billion Lek. It represents the value of the construction of the Plant, which equals portion of Budget Payments that the Albanian Government must make for this contract.

According to the Treasury data filtered through Open Spending Albania, it emerged that for the 2015-2021 period about 3.37 billion Lekë have been liquidated for this contract. Despite the fact that contractual forecasts forsees budget payments towards the concession, completed in 2021, there is still an amount of 1.26 billion Lek unforeseen by the Albanian Government.

According to data published by the Ministry of Finance and Economy in the Summary Annual Report, the amount of waste recovered per year provided in the contract is 43,200 tons / year, however for 2020 only 35,777 tons of waste were managed, because no all Municipalities of Elbasan Region send waste to the built plant due to high transportation costs. A problematic issue of this contract is also the determination of the selling price of the energy produced. For 2020, 2,763,300 KW of energy have been produced.

For this Concession Contract there is no concession fee in favor of the State Budget.

Regarding the Jurisdiction for the settlement of disputes between the parties, the Concession Contract of the Tirana Incinerator and the Fier Incinerator provide for Foreign Jurisdiction, namely the Arbitration Court of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), Paris. While the Concession Contract for the construction, operation and transfer of the incinerator for the processing of urban waste of the Municipality of Elbasan determines the local jurisdiction, more specifically the Court of the Tirana Judicial District.

Jurisdiction is the Court, the Arbitration Chamber or the Institution designated in advance as an Institution where the parties will be referred for review and adjudication in case they have conflicts, disputes or issues for interpretation.

Source: Open Spending.al, OpenCorporates.al, Ministry of Finance and Economy
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania

The information used for the purpose of this Article comes from official channels, such as the Ministry of Finance and Economy, Budget Report 2019,2020,2021,2022. Instead, regarding the data related to the budget payments for 2015-2021 period, please refer to our portal Open Spending Albania.

Concession and PPP Contracts, in force, information and Documents on implementing Companies, are published in an easily accessible and well-structured format in the Concession Database portal OpenCorporates.al. For more information about the calculations please refer to Excel sheet below. Other AIS databases are OpenProcurement.al dhe OpenCorporates.al

This article was drafted and published in the framework of the “Open Data, Access and Transparency over sectors exposed to Risk of Corruption” project. The latter is financially supported by SIDA – Sweden International Development Cooperation Agency

Download excel:PPP incinerators, Financial Support from the State Budget over the years, 2015-2024
Comments and Analysis: Open Data Albania
Translated by: Rezarta Cushaj