The departure of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina is a key and biggest problem today, and it is directly related to the devastating data on the number of newborns in recent years. Business analyst Adnan Fehratbegovic has been dealing with demography for years, and the research he published speaks best about the demographic collapse in our country, which in his opinion is the biggest problem in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Klix.ba news portal reports.
“The demographic collapse of our country is something I have been warning about for years. In just three years, terrible things have happened – the number of newborns, which is actually an indicator of the number of young people left in the country, has fallen further in Federation of BiH of 10 percent, in Republika Srpska 5 percent, and at the level of BiH 8 percent, resulting in more than 110,000 emigrants in 2018 and 2019. The coming years will lead to an even more difficult situation – in the first six months, FBiH had number of babies like Montenegro on an annual level, and Montenegro has only 620,000 inhabitants, “Fehratbegovic wrote.
Fehratbegovic’s analysis was made on the basis of official statistics of the entity institutes, and he brings everything into direct correlation with the enormous numbers of our people leaving for the countries of Western Europe.
“I did three or four years ago projections until 2033 and they predicted a drop in the number of newborns to 23 or 24 thousand a year. If we compare that with Montenegro, it is three times more, but it is a country with 620 thousand inhabitants and what is happening in the last two years is even worse than I predicted, and with this trend, FBiH will have 15,000 children at the end of the year, which is twice the number that Montenegro has, “Adnan Fehratbegovic told Klix.ba.
Economic analyst Faruk Hadzic also cooperates with him, telling Klix.ba that instead of constant political quarrels and misunderstandings on issues from which ordinary people do not benefit, the daily focus should be on issues of population emigration and negative natural increase.
“It is especially devastating that fewer and fewer children are being born in FBiH and that we need to look at the long-term consequences, especially economic ones due to the complete relativization of this problem. Today in BiH we have about 466,000 students and 694,000 pensioners. Who can be the bearer of the future development of the state, where will professors and teachers work, who will pay for health care and pensions, how will we provide pensioners with honorably earned pensions, who will repay debts and loans that are now rising? I want to believe that through greater engagement of the profession and the media, politics as a whole will ultimately be animated so that, while we still have time, we can start solving these essential problems, “Hadzic concluded.
