The entities in BiH in recent months indebted to a great extent with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as with the issue of treasury bills.
According to data published by the Sarajevo Stock Exchange (SASE), the FBiH took the loan of 240 million BAM through the emission of treasury bills and bonds since the beginning of the year. On the other hand, according to the Ministry of Finance of the RS, debt of the RS on this basis is over 400 million BAM.
Professor at the Faculty of Economy in Sarajevo, Muris Cicic stated that these figures are particularly worrying in the RS, where the government took a much greater loan than the entity budget can handle.
He also commented on the recent ban that the RS authorities introduced to companies from FBiH that sell products with chemicals and biocides, which caused many problems in certain companies in the FBiH.
“It seems to me that in the RS much more important topics are nationalism and the attempt to separate economic space than the management, real prosperity and standard of living. Power there is busy with other problems, to say political and not real problems which the government should be dealing with, and that is the benefit of citizens and measures for economic development. They are mainly engaged in politics,” said Cicic.
One of the ways to patch budget holes in the previous period were treasury bills, and customers are mostly banks.
“These are short-term loans with a maturity of six months. Now interest rates are relatively favorable. But it is the simplest debt which is payable usually within six months. Entities use them to get over a certain period. If the budget has no inflow now, and will have it in ten months, then they issue treasury bills to get over this period. If there is no inflow for ten months, then they are just borrowing as long as they can,” explained Cicic.
He emphasized that not everything is so black in BiH, because the economy is rising by 3 % and that the positive data on the growth of revenues is coming from the Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA).
“Obviously, budget revenues are better, revenues from the VAT are increasing,” concluded Cicic.
(Source: fokus.ba)
