The disposal of waste in the municipality of Kamzë and the agreement the municipality made with the concessionaire raises a number of questions about the procedures the institutions has followed. According to the data reviewed by Faktoje experts, the concessionaire loses about €48,500 per year, not including the part that should cover waste collection and transportation services.
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The municipality of Kamzë is part of the district of Tirana and as such is part of the concession contract concluded with the Tirana Landfill. This contract is dated August 31, 2017 and was concluded with the entity known as Integrated Energy BV SPV. According to this Contract, the price for the disposal of one ton of urban waste is €29, excluding VAT, payable by the administrative units of the district of Tirana, which also includes the territory covered by the municipality of Kamzë.
The contract with Tirana Landfill
Faktoje, after reviewing treasury payments on the Open Spending Albania portal, found that this Municipality has not made any payments to towards “Integrated Energy BV SPV.”
Screenshot from Open Spending, showing there are zero transactions between Kamzë Municipality and Integrated Energy BV SPV.
Based on this finding, Faktoje addressed a request for information to the municipality of Kamza to understand where the waste generated in its territory is deposited.
In a response dated Feburary 1, 2022, the Municipality of Kamza informed us that in May 23, 2013 it concluded another contract for “the Concession/Public-Private Partnership of the Cleaning, Collection, Transportation and Selection of Urban Waste Service for the City of Kamza”.
Contracted signed by the Municipality of Kamza
The total value of this concession contract with the company Eco-Cleaning amounts to 1.35 billion Albanian Lek over 12 years, excluding VAT. This translates into an annual value of 112.5 million Albanian Lek per year, excluding VAT, or approximately €937.500 per year excluding VAT. The monthly value of the payments is calculated at 11,250,000 Albanian Lek, with VAT. Payments through the treasury—and listed on the Open Spending portal—confirm these payments, as can be seen in the table below.
Payments for the May-December 2018 period
Payments for the 2019-2022 period
Arrears or retained penalties?
In total, the value of the payments made during this 4-year period (May 2018 – May 2022), as evidenced on the Open Spending platform, is about ALL 416.8 million with VAT. According to the contract, the value of the VAT payments for the 4-year period amounts to ALL 540 million. This means that the Municipality of Kamze has paid about 123 million lek or approximately 1 million euros less than what it is contractually obligated to pay.
In a previous article, Faktoje looked looked at the absence of transfer stations implemented by Eco-Cleaning concessionaire, despite it being included in the contract. In that article, we cited the response of the Municipality of Kamza on whether penalties were imposed on the Concessionaire for this breach. The official response states:
“Yes, we have applied penalties to the concessionaire, for incomplete services according to the contract”.
Kamzë Municipality did not inform us of the value of the applied penalties.
Based on this analysis, it is possible that the value of approximately 1 million euros that the Municipality of Kamzë has yet to pay to Eco Cleaning for the 4-year period may be as a result of these penalties or arrears.
Where is the waste of the municipality of Kamzë Municipality deposited and at what price?
In the answer dated February 1, 2022 01by the Municipality of Kamza to Faktoje’s questions about where the waste is deposited, the institution states:
“The municipality of Kamza does not have a contract with ‘Integrated Energy B.V. SPV’ Sh.p.k., because it transferred the duties to the Concessionaire. Staring August 31, 2017 (the date when the contract with the Tirana Landfill entered into force) until May 31, 2018 the waste disposal owned by the Municipality of Kamze was deposited on site, whereas starting June 1, 2018 it was treated on concession.”
In this response, municipality of Kamza did not provide clarifications on where the waste collected by the Eco-Cleaning Concessionaire is deposited. Regarding the question about the price it pays per waste deposited, they answered:
“From June 1, 2018 and onwards, the service for the cleaning and collection of waste management has been transferred by Decision no. 87 dated August 22, 2017 and by contract no. 1107 Rep. no. 486/2 May 2018 to the Concessionaire company ‘ALKO IMPEX GENERAL CONSTRUCTION’”.
Answer dated February 1, 2022.
In this response, the municipality of Kamza does not inform us where Eco-Cleaning deposits the waste it collects, nor about the fees applied to this service.
Faktoje once again insisted and sent other request for information on this matter. In its answer dated June 16, 2022, the Municipality of Kamze replied:
“The waste of the Municipality of Kamze is been deposited by the concessionaire, in the licensed landfill for the District of Tirana, as provided for in the contract, which is published by the Concessions Handling Agency (ATRAKO).”
Answer dated June 16, 2022.
The Tirana landfill, which is managed by “Integrated Energy BV SPV”, is the landfill that, according to the contract, holds exclusive rights for the disposal of waste in the District of Tirana. Based on this data, it results that Kamzë Municipality does not pay the landfill for the disposal of waste. Rather, this is covered by Eco-Cleaning as part of the contract with the municipality, as part of the monthly payment that this institution makes to the concessionaire.
How many tons of waste does Kamze Municipality generate?
Faktoje asked for detailed information about the waste generated by the municipality of Kamze. This information is also necessary for the analysis that the economic operators would provide for the performance of the service, including collection, transport and storage costs, as well as to see the budget impact for this Municipality. This is also important due to the fact that both the Tirana District and now the Durrës Municipality, according to the concession contract with the Tirana Landfill, deposit at a price of €29 euros per ton of waste, excluding VAT.
In the answer dated February 1, 2022, the municipality of Kamze answered that between September 1, 2017 (the date when the contract with the Tirana Landfill entered into force) and until the end of 2017, the amount of waste collected is 26,681 tons over a period of four months. This translates into an annual value of around 80,000 tonnes of waste. For the first 5-months of 2018 (until the contract with Eco Cleaning entered into force), the municipality of Kamze declared that it had accumulated waste in the amount of 35,351 tons. Covered into an annual value, this is about 84,842 tons of waste. On average, if we were to take the values of the period between September 2017 and May 2018, the annual value of waste is about 82,709 tons accumulated per year.
The municipality of Kamze in its response dated February 1, 2022 did not provide any more information about the amount of collected waste.
Kamzë Municipality’s response to Faktoje
Faktoje insisted again, asking for the amount of waste collected by the Concessionaire. In response to our request, on June 16, 2022, this institution replied that the annual amount of waste collected by the Concessionaire “is approximately 33,990 tons per year.”
Kamzë Municipality’s response to Faktoje.
It can be clearly seen that the amount of waste declared as accumulated since the beginning of the concession contract has been halved. This difference is crucial to understanding the reasons and impact on the economic model of both the Municipality and the economic operator.
The findings open up room for further investigation into these differences, especially if current or past contracts for collection, transportation, and storage are made based on declared quantities. And furthermore, such a difference has a direct impact on the economic analysis of the offer given by the concessionaire, since they are responsible for the entire cycle of waste management in this Municipality. A twice as large amount of waste, which requires twice as much capacity, would normally be perceived by any operator that has been involved, in the past, in the waste management of this municipality.
The Municipality of Kamze itself has been aware of the possible existence of these imbalances in the amount of accumulated waste. The tender documents for the concession of the waste management service state:
“From the data received from Kamze Municipality, it is reported that in 2016, 79,825 tons of waste were generated per year, or an average of 218 tons/day. As mentioned above, this figure is questionable as long as there are no scales in the landfill, but also due to the fact that this figure may also be a consequence of the inert waste deposited in this area.”
Despite this statement and high uncertainty, the fact remains that the declared amount of waste collected per year has dropped from about 80 thousand tons per year to 34 thousand tons per year,and the economic operator submitted an offer of about ALL 112.5 million per year, without VAT, to cover the collection, transportation, selection, and waste disposal services of this Municipality.
At what price is Kamzë Municipality’s waste deposited?
The Tirana Landfill, according to the contract, holds the exclusive right to deposit the waste of the district of Tirana at a price of €29 euros per ton, excluding VAT. This price was also given to the Municipality of Durrës. Likewise, this landfill, under normal conditions, would apply the same fee to the Municipality of Kamze. The latter declares that there is no contract with Integrated Energy B.V. SPV Sh.p.k., because it transferred to contract to the concessionaire.
At what price does the Eco-Cleaning concessionaire deposit waste in the Tirana Landfill? If we consider that there is still no transfer and selection station built in the municipality of Kamza, the value that Eco-Cleaning has requested for the entire waste management cycle is around €937,500, excluding VAT. Meanwhile, this concessionaire, to deposit just 34 thousand tons of declared waste in the Sharra Landfill at a price of €29 per ton, excluding VAT, must pay a value of 986,000 euros. This means that Eco-Cleaning suffers a loss of about €48,500 euros per year, not including the fact that it is also supposed to cover the services related to the collection and transportation of the waste not included in the value above.
With an amount of waste of about 80,000 tons per year as reported in the tender documents, the loss for the concessionaire would be even higher, meaning their economic proposal would be worthless. Then the question raised by economic experts is: Does Eco-Cleaning deposit waste in the Sharra Landfill? If so, at what price does Eco-Cleaning deposit in Sharra Landfill?
