According to the Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH, the total external debt of our country amounts to 8.36 billion BAM. These figures are related to the period ending the 30th of June last year. It is certain that this information will be significantly changed after the Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH updates this data for the period until the 31st of December 2016, because the extended arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is worth about billion BAM, will be included in the external debt.
From this amount, the FBiH has to return a total of 5.21 billion BAM, the RS 3.07 billion BAM, Brcko District a total of 20.5 million BAM, and state institutions 54.3 million BAM. The reason for this is that most of the loans that are taken from international banks and financial institutions are actually intended for entities, although all international credit agreements are concluded through the Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH.
It is important to note that the entire debt of 8.36 BAM was not created after the war. Here is also included the debt that BiH inherited from the former Yugoslavia in the succession process. Part of this debt was returned but we still need to pay off around 1.5 billion BAM. This debt should be returned to the London Club of creditors, the Paris Club and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which operates under the auspices of the World Bank.
When it comes to the debt that we are returning at the moment, we owe most of the money to the World Bank, a total of 2.33 billion BAM or 421 million BAM to IBRD, and 1.9 billion BAM to the International Development Association (IDA). We also owe 1.68 billion BAM to the European Investment Bank (EIB). Interestingly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is in the third place when it comes to the amount of loan that we need to return, which is the amount of 963 million BAM. This amount does not include the last credit arrangement with the IMF, and which is the most recent issue in domestic institutions.
With regard to the due obligations, BiH, including lower levels of government, is returning about 600 million BAM of external debt. In fact, in the last 10 years, with minor fluctuations, the value of the annual repayment of external debt is constantly increasing, as our debt is growing.
Thus, our external debt which amounted to 3.96 billion BAM was increased in the past 10 years to the current 8.36 billion BAM. The greatest value of the external debt was recorded at the end of 2015 when is amounted to 8.41 billion BAM. The largest amount of returned loan was recorded in 2014 when it amounted to almost 770 million BAM.
However, although these are large amounts of money, BiH does not fall in the category of largely indebted countries. Given that the total external debt amounts to over 40 % of gross domestic product (GDP), BiH is classified as moderately indebted country.
If we observe the share of debt in GDP in the countries of the region as a parameter, BiH is in a far more favorable position than Serbia, whose debt amounts to 73 % of GDP, with their debt amounting to about 50 billion BAM, and Montenegro, whose debt is smaller than ours and amounts to about 4.5 billion BAM, but its share of GDP is 58.8 %.
(Source: faktor.ba)
