Govt Expands Anti-Graft Measures to State-Owned Firms
Addressing reporters after the session, Public Administration Minister Boris Koprivnikar said the general principle was increasing transparency of all operations and that the measures targeted not only ministries or theirs bodies but business subjects in majority or sole ownership of the state.
He noted that the commitment for zero tolerance to corruption had been made already in the election campaign and that it was also contained in the coalition agreement, so the government considered the combat against graft a priority.
The plan envisages 11 measures for 2015 and 2016 along with the bodies in charge of their implementation and deadlines. Koprivnikar highlighted an audit of the project to build a new generator at the Šoštanj coal-fired plant, whose costs more than doubled to EUR 1.4bn.
The minister said a comprehensive review would be conducted to establish how the costs ballooned and potential flaws or wrongdoing. A special law designed to avoid separate audits is to be adopted by the government by the end of March and submitted to regular parliamentary procedure.
The minister also mentioned changes concerning the SSH and BAMC, the latter aimed at increasing transparency of the bad bank's operations and reviewing the past transfers of non-performing claims from banks, which Koprivnikar said would be comprehensive.
"I don't think it's any secret that coordination is under way over the first draft of an audit report by the Court of Audit in the matter. We look forward to...getting a quality groundwork for measures and detection of potential flaws considering the many suspicions," Koprivnikar said.
He said that the emerging solutions were not simple and that the government could not intervene with "fire and sword" at institutions, change their operations, abolish a company or "radically replace" the management.
But he said that the government could intervene through the legislative framework or measures, although it would take a while for the mechanisms to produce concrete effects.
The measures planned also include adopting a code of ethics for government and ministry officials, ensuring a legislative footprint and centralising public procurement in healthcare. The minister said that the price would be replaced as the decisive factor with how economical the project would be.