Changes Needed in Draft-Law on Donations and Sponsorship in the Public Domain

29 March 2006

The Skopje United Nations Association (SUNA) presented yesterday several concrete proposals for changes in the Draft-Law on Donation and Sponsorship in the Public Domain.

Jordan Jakimovski from the Institute for Sociological, Political and Juridical Research (ISPPI) and Biljana Peseva from SUNA presented the proposed changes, defined recently at the meeting of twenty Macedonian NGOs, held last week at ISPPI and organized by the Institute and SUNA on weekly basis.

In order to provide for the best functioning and implementation of the Law, the NGOs proposed changes in several articles that they found questionable.

Ergo, they propose that Article 13, which provides for tax relief for the donors in a public sector for contributions of up to 24,000 Denars, should include a clause for progressive tax relief for donors of greater amounts of money.

Article 18, which allows donations to be made from one to another commercial company, should be deleted, say the NGOs, since it practically legalizes financial manipulation and fraudulent behaviour.

ISPPI and SUNA claim that the current Draft was designed to reduce the responsibility and liability of the donor. They point out at Article 23, which prescribes sanctions and penalties only for the organization that received a donation, while there are no sanctions for contract violations made by the donor.

The Law, in its current version, completely omits many forms of fundrasing and donation, like SMS and over the phone contributions, which are already used extensively and provide no possibility to even consider the option to sign a donation agreement between the contributors and the receiving organizations.