A conference on the decentralization of power was held in Tirana, jointly organized by Association for Local Autonomy and the Association of Albanian Municipalities, in partnership with USAID’s Planning and Local Governance Project (Tetra Tech ARD). According to news reports, Minister of Local Government Issues Bledar Çuçi said that the administrative-territorial reform was now a tangible reality, and that it was building a sound basis for the further advancement of the decentralization of power to the benefit of the local government units. He said that a transition fund worth $20mln had been allocated to the newly established municipalities. According to him, the government had sponsored the drafting of the territorial development plans for 26 municipalities, and it was currently sponsoring the digitalization of the local government units’ archives. Minister Çuçi said that the government was in the process of drafting a new law on the local government units’ finances. He called on Mayors of Municipalities to put together good development projects for their jurisdictions if they wanted funding from the government’s fund for the development of regions. In this respect, he compared the budgets of Tirana and Shkodra Municipalities, saying that while Tirana got only 23% of its funding from the state budget, the same figure went up to 60% in the Shkodra case. According to Çuçi, Tirana Municipality had been more able to secure extra funding through increased collection of local taxes and duties and partnerships with private businesses.