Fiscal decentralization: City of Belgrade case study

Abstract

The research in this paper is devoted to analysis of budget items for the city of Belgrade, to revenues and earnings, expenses and issuance for 2013, 2014 and 2015 in order to determine changes in the structure and in time, and, based on these, the appropriate conclusions were drawn, which can serve as recommendations for creating budgets in the future. One of the key problems in public procurement at the City of Belgrade level were significant differences in prices for the same items procured by different contracting authorities. In many cases the same bidder offered the very same items at prices which differed up to 50% to different contracting authorities at the city level. That was a signal for the city administration to centralize the procurement of certain items in 2015 achieving significant reduction in prices of bundled procurement compared to the ones undertaken by different contracting authorities previously. In this context, the subject of the second part of this paper will be devoted to the importance of centralization of public procurements in the segment where it is possible to achieve efficiency in the management of budget funds.