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"Everything was on paper until recently – how is the ministry supposed to collect its dues?," asked rhetorically George Papanikolaou, the Executive Manager of Top Plant. This is a consulting company assisting the Ministry of Regional Development and Competitiveness in developing the new electronic system for monitoring the penalty fees imposed on commercial sites in the country.

After the deepening of the crisis in the local economy and the findings of serious deficiencies in the collection of taxes the socialist government of Gerogios Papandreou undertook to modernize and streamline state administration. The task seems almost impossible especially considering that the government hardly takes into account how and what amount of the penalty fees imposed during the year are collected. It is supposed that the effectiveness of penalty fees collection have been directly related only to the degree of responsibility of the employees in the regional offices of each control institution.  

According to official data the Ministry of Regional Development and Competitiveness announced this week, the penalty fees imposed on wholesalers and retailers in 2010 amount to around 4.13 million euros. Most of the breaches were found with wholesalers and the penalty fees imposed amount to 3.7 million euros. The most common breaches include improper presentation of goods or violations related to pricing. The ministry has imposed penalty fees of 105,000 euros on the fuel market for non-compliance with price ceilings.The ministry announced in its press release the amount of the penalty fees imposed without mentioning the uncollected amount. The Deputy Minister of Regional Development Dinos Rovlyas could not answer a journalist who asked what the percentage of uncollected amounts of the total penalties imposed for 2010 was.
 
The introduction of the penalty management system will enable the supervisory authorities as Directorate General for Foods at the Ministry, local governments and supervisors at the port authorities to collect information about the penalties in a main database. Thus, the relevant departments will have real time information about the state of the penalties (paid, unpaid, timed) classified by different features. The system will be connected to social insurance funds and regional tax offices in the future.

Of course, nothing happens as if by magic so that the earlier results from the introduction of the program as actual data from the activity of controlling bodies will be presented after three months. The program will be pilot tested by Directorate Generale for Trade at the Ministry of Regional Development and Competitiveness through limited amount of data entry first. If the system works properly the program product will be installed in the middle of the year in all other state control authorities operating in commercial supervision.

Top Plant consultants developed the software after winning the public tender for specific electronic system developing. Preparatory works and researching the needs of the ministry have taken four months and the programming itself took three more. According to Kathimerini, the Greek government has paid 28,000 euros excluding VAT for the service. The software developers say they are ready to improve the system if necessary after its start up .