Mayor Fation Duro Rejects Patos-Fier Municipal Merger

Mayor Fation Duro of Patos publicly opposed the government’s proposal to merge Patos municipality with the neighboring Fier municipality. In a social‑media post he highlighted the final report of the Commission for Territorial Reform, which does not recommend the merger.

Duro pointed out that Patos ranks 10th out of 61 Albanian municipalities on the Municipal Functional Index (IFB) with 71.7 points, a level classified as high. The index measures fiscal autonomy, budget rigidity, service coverage, staff efficiency and pending obligations. Patos scores 16.3 points higher than Fier and leads all municipalities in Fier County. He argued that the official rationale – that small municipalities lack administrative and financial capacity – does not apply to Patos, whose data show the opposite.