Two weeks have passed since the start of the year and the state budget is still making payments for December 2025.
According to data from the treasury of the Ministry of Finance as of December 7, 380 million lek (3 million euros) in payments were made for invoices dated December 24, over 505 million lek or 5,5 million euros for invoices dated December 31.
These are just two examples, as most of the payments from the treasury in the first two weeks of January 2026 are being made for December 2025 bills.
Finance experts claim that paying December bills in the first days of the following year is legally permissible.
The Albanian budget system operates primarily on a cash basis, which means that expenses are recorded at the moment the payment is made and not necessarily when the obligation arises.
For this reason, an invoice for services or goods from December, but paid in January, is legally counted as an expense for the new year. This does not constitute a violation of the law on public financial management, but it distorts the indicators of a budget year and undermines transparency.
Paying December bills in January makes the previous year's deficit appear lower, while the real burden of spending is artificially shifted to the following year.
This method of December payments in the next fiscal year has become a repeated practice every year-end, damaging the credibility of fiscal reporting and limiting the right of the public and the Assembly to understand how much the previous year's governance really cost.
In reporting according to international standards, expenses are recorded at the moment the economic obligation arises.
According to official data from the treasury of the Ministry of Finance, during the month of December, from the 2nd to the 29th, about 84 billion lek (840 million euros) in payments were made.
From January 1 to December 29, 2025, when the latest data on treasury payments are available, a total of about 722,6 billion lek were spent, while the annual plan was 831,7 billion lek or a surplus of 109 billion lek, about 1,1 billion euros on December 30, one day before the end of the year.
Every year at the end of the year, the government approves an increasing budget for the following year, but in reality it never manages to be executed according to the plan approved by the Albanian Parliament, even though the country has great needs with almost 20 percent of the population in relative poverty and massive emigration.
In 2025, the surplus was much higher as December payments were more limited, according to the investigation. The budget surplus, part of which can be used to further reduce public debt, is better than its abuses, as the results of the investigation by SPAK have shown./ Monitor
