Prishtina, 03.07.2018 – Minister Lluka attended today the round-table organized by the Kosovo Open Society Foundation on the topic “Kosovo’s damaging contracts. Whose fault is it?”

He emphasized that one of the main reasons why Kosovo was damaged from its major contracts is the lack of professionalism and inadequate representation in arbitration procedures.

“Contracts were professionally drafted. The problem is that the Government entered into contractual arrangements without possessing the budget envisaged in them. The law on public procurement comprises the obligation to possess financial means at the time of contract execution. The problem lies in meeting the requirements we committed to in the contracts. A significant part of the blame is to be borne by our representatives in arbitration procedures. For instance, we won the case with AXOS, but whenever we are represented by local companies, we don’t come out as winners,” he said.

Minister Lluka said that publicly-owned companies represent one of Kosovo’s largest challenges.

“The most harmful contracts were signed by these companies. We are making a group of Kosovo’s best lawyers, in order to conduct an analysis for the Telecom and 15 contracts that were signed but never implemented. They range from 600 thousand euro to 10 million euro. The idea is to clear Telecom of the obligations from these contracts and to see how we can reconstruct the Telecom. These problems derive from lack of knowledge and possible misuses. We will organize the work during July, and have six months to analyze the contracts,” Lluka said.