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Individual NGO savings a secret

Central Bank stated yesterday that they are not able to publish the amount of individual savings of NGOs and other non-profit organizations, because the Law forbids them from doing so. These organizations jointly have 45,7 million EUR in banks.

“According to Article 84 of the Law on Banks, data on individual state of deposits are considered a banking secret, and Central Bank cannot publish them. That information can only be shared with explicit agreement from the owner of the account or based on the warrant of competent state authority”, it was said to Pobjeda daily from CBCG.

Respecting the principle of confidentiality, data is published at the aggregate level, with detailed overview of all the balance sheets of banks and MFI, by sector and maturity.

“Structure of balances by sectors contains sheets for NGO and other non-profit institutions at the aggregate level. Monetary statistics that is published monthly on CBCG website is put together in accordance with MMF and ECB methodology”, they confirmed in CBCG.

While the majority of NGO remains silent on the matter, after Pobjeda daily published this information, Euromost reacted and requested CBCG to publish the names of non-profit organizations and the amount of their deposits. Prosecutor Ivica Stanković was asked to look into NGO business.

Public publishing of the list was also requested by NGO Crnogorski ženski lobi. They asked that the methods to acquire such large savings be questioned, and they suggested that the investigation started with them.

Non-profit organizations are NGOs and foundations. According to that from the beginning of last year, there are 3.677 NGOs and 131 foundations registered in Montenegro. CB documents hva reports of savings from 2006 – 11 million, 2008 – 30 million, 2013 – 26 million, 2015 – more than 39 million…

NGOs savings in the end of last year was twice the amount of municipalities savings (29.4 million). They had six times the amount of regulatory agencies (7,4 million), and almost 4 times the amount of state funds (13 million). Their savings were higher than the half of deposits of the central Government that had in its reserves 81,2 million EUR at the end of last year. Non-profits also had credit debt of 5,28 million EUR in the end of last year, while municipalities had ten times the debt – 52,6 million EUR.

Concentrated in Podgorica

NGOs receive money from the Budget every year for specific projects, funded from revenue from games of chance. Last year they received 3,1 million EUR.

DRI did a revision of NGO financing last time in July 2014, when it was stated that the Law on NGOs is not being implemented… but not much has changed to this day.

The majority of registered NGOs work in culture, agriculture, social issues, development of civic society and volunteerism, social and health care, environment protection, minority and human rights, arts. Most of them are located in Podgorica, than Nikšić and Bar, while Plužine and Žabljak have the least amount of registered NGOs.

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