PUBLIC PROPERTY MANAGEMENT PROJECT CLOSURE

The closing conference of the project "Public Property Management" was held today at the Master Centre of the Novi Sad Fair. The project worth 147,267.43 EUR is funded by the European Union in the amount of 112,320.87 EUR within the EU Exchange 4 Programme and is implemented by the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities. The City of Novi Sad is the project coordinator and the Municipality of Apatin is the co-applicant. The aim is to contribute to the modern management of public property in two municipalities, in line with the European best practice.

- According to the Law on Public Property, all local self-governments must make an inventory of their public property, and if they do not do it, the property in question will be transferred to the Directorate for Property of the Republic of Serbia. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that all developed countries use the public property registered as their ownership in the function of filling the budget. Unfortunately, Serbia’s public property still represents the budget’s expenditure, hence, the goal of this project is registering and managing of the public property so that it generates income in the future - Olivera Simović, the project’s manager, said.

The conference was attended by the State Secretary at the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government Ivan Bošnjak, who pointed out that the management of public property, i.e. the budgetary consequences of poor management by local self-government represents one of the key issues addressed in the Ministry’s scope of work.

- Support of the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia, through the Exchange program, and cooperation with the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities are highly important and produce notable results. Local self-governments in Serbia have been provided with improved procedures, better equipment and more skilled staff, better trained for property registration and then its appropriate management – said Ivan Bošnjak.
José Gomez, Head of Operations II in the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia, said that the importance that the European Union gives to the local self-governments is evidenced in the amount of funds it allocates to the support programs. According to him, efficient public property management should contribute to the revenue increase in local self-governments, as well as to the attraction of investments which will provide employment for a greater number of people.

Novi Sad, 28th January 2015