The BiH Diaspora sends nearly 2 billion US dollars annually, which makes up around 20 percent of the gross domestic product in BiH.
“This puts our country in 5th place among the 20 leading companies in the world by volume of remittances of migrants in relation to gross domestic product”, announced the President of the BiH Association “Naša perspektiva” (Our Perspective) Armin Alijagić for Fena. One of the tasks is work with the BiH diaspora.
He points out that to not engage BiH diaspora in BiH would be a missed opportunity to have a significant impact on development.
“Investments that are implemented by community members are themselves specific because it is proved that they are realized during times of great uncertainty and economic risk. Even though the diaspora implies a third of the current population in the country, the development potential for this group still remains largely untapped”, underlined Alijagić.
Alijagić said that members of the Diaspora community are currently facing many problems when it comes to opportunities for investment and establishing business cooperation with local companies. Thus, it is necessary to find a systematic solution to this.
Some of the restrictions on investment are an uninformed diaspora on various instruments of support to investors, investment offers in selected regions, as well as their lack of involvement in existing infrastructural projects designed to stimulate the development of small and medium-sized businesses.
Also, there is no joint platform for members of the diaspora that would enable the mutual exchange of information and good practice being used to address the challenges in investment and business.
“When it comes to achieving business cooperation, members of the diaspora community are often uninformed of companies that operate in BiH, and of the existence of various business associations and clusters through which that cooperation could be realized’’, said Alijagić.
He said that, in addition to remittances, the Association “Naša perspektiva” and its partners in BiH and the diaspora focus on creative mechanisms through which migrants could contribute to growth in BiH, and seeks to intensify the exchange of knowledge and resources of BiH diaspora in order to accelerate economic and social development.
This association emphasized that it is necessary to encourage the diaspora to secure needed capital for the local economy through various instruments of capital markets and to encourage economic cooperation between local companies and companies whose owners are members of the Diaspora community.
According to the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees of BiH, there are more than 1.350.000 people of BiH heritage who live outside of BiH, as compared to the number of people in the country representing one third of the total population.
