The map shows the transfers from the Government to the municipalities and county councils from the Reserve Fund (15%), Local Development National Program (65%) and other programs managed by the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration that sum up to 7.5 billion lei*. The funds are exclusively national, distributed less transparent, by rules that do not apply to the European funding. The dimension of the circles means how much money a municipality or county council received between June 2012 and December 2015. If a dot gets bigger than the locality gets more money. 

Between 2012 and 2016, the Reserve Fund of the Government and the Local Development National Program (PNDL) were the main instruments of the political parties in power to transfer funds in an arbitrary manner to their own mayors and to attract others. As the control mechanisms are almost absent and the implementation of the investments is not properly supervised, the funds were distributed without major inconveniences.  Moreover, the funds were used to attract the migrating mayors through the – later declared unconstitutional – Government Emergency Ordinance 55 in 2014, an agitated year, with presidential elections.

 

Our main conclusions are:

• All the parties – independent of their colour or affiliation – used the same practices, as they also did in the previous years. See our previous report here
• Most likely, by raising the investment sums, the government encouraged the migration of the local elected officials and after changing the party they were rewarded with funds for their locality
• We biggest part of the funds were spent in 2014 and 2015. In 2014, almost 80% were spend between September and December, a period coinciding with the political migration and the presidential elections
• The maximum of clientelism was reached in thee second half of 2014 and 2015, when the chance to get money if you were in the governing party was twice bigger than if you were in the opposition
• Most of the migrating mayors got more money after October 2014 than before
• The sums for the transfers from the Reserve Fund became bigger in electoral years and were spent on investments that were not urgent, as the law says; the government created exceptions from the Law of the public finances in order to permit more expenses on things such as debts
• The main winners were the social democrats (PSD), their satelitte parties (ALDE, UNPR and PC), as well as the independents; the liberals and the democrat liberals were the main losers, although the liberals were in power until 2014
• in Bucharest, the 3rd Sector got much more money than others that have lower budgets. It received 55 times more money that the 2nd Sector and three times more than the 5th, which is the poorest in Bucharest
• The public institutions do not spend the money set by their annual budgets and therefore this is an indicator of bad governance. Moreover, not all the estimated money are spent and this is a fact that affects in a negative manner the public procurement market and the economy as a whole.

Read our entire report  report here (Romanian only)

Read also reports on public procurement from PNDL

Money and procurement: where did the contracts for local investments end up?

Money and procurement 2: where did the contracts for local investments end up?

*The index comprises payment made by MDRAP for PNDL, thermal rehabilitation, termofication, debts, tourtistical infrastructure, expenses for winter and the aproved sums for the Reserve and Intervention Funds. We did not include the transfers to the central institutions, funds for buses or the Enviroment Fund (for which no public information is available).