The public company that charges for parking in central Skopje, it turns out, is excellent at collecting cash from citizens - but not quite as good at paying its own bills. The State Audit Office found that the firm JP „Parkinzi na Opština Centar“ failed to pay 86.4 million denars, or roughly 1.4 million euros, in communal tax into the budget of the very municipality that owns it, Centar.

The audit for 2024 delivered an unfavourable opinion on the truthfulness of the financial statements and a qualified opinion on compliance with the law. The bulk of the unpaid tax - over 79 million denars - relates to the 2019 to 2023 period. So this is not an accidental delay: it is a debt that has been piling up for years.

A list of failures that doesn't stop there

The auditors listed a whole string of weaknesses. The company kept improper records of its equipment - parking meters, prefabricated structures, kiosk systems - with no depreciation calculated. It reported claims of over 80 million denars, a quarter of which are more than six years old, and for which no timely collection action was taken. No full inventory was carried out, a discrepancy was found in the cash register, and the trading books were left unclosed, which makes retroactive changes possible.

Here is the irony every Skopje resident will recognise. A company whose whole purpose is to charge - to fine you the moment you run a minute over on your parking ticket - has itself racked up a debt of millions and stale claims nobody bothered to chase. When a citizen doesn't pay, a warning and a bailiff follow. When the company doesn't pay its own municipality, an audit report follows - one that hardly anyone will read.

Weaknesses were also found in public procurement - disproportionate conditions for bidding, accepted offers above the estimated value, late notifications. The question „who will answer for this“ sounds almost naive when it is a single municipal firm. But precisely because it is local and „small“, it is worth asking: if the ones who charge us don't pay their own dues, why should we believe the parking money ends up where it should?