Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) faces an additional financial burden if the payment under the arbitration decision in the case of the lawsuit by the Slovenian company Viaduct is not made within the next ten days.
Namely, the deadline offered by the plaintiff to the Council of Ministers of BiH expires in 10 days – June 17th.
In negotiations with the Council of Ministers of BiH, the plaintiff agreed on March 17th that for the next three months, daily interest of 9.000 euros (about 18.000 BAM) would not be calculated on the debt to the Slovenian company Viaduct, which amounts to 110 million BAM, if the payment is made on time.
According to the mentioned offer by the plaintiff, the claim on June 17th is equal to the claim on March 1st and amounts to 56 million euros or 110 million BAM.
However, in case of further failure to act according to the arbitration decision, the claim will be increased by about one million euros (two million BAM) for the previous three months. The total debt to the Slovenian company Viaduct will reach a monetary amount of about 57 million euros or 113 million BAM with the continued calculation of awarded interest.
The current amount of interest calculated on a daily basis is 9.650 euros or almost 18.873 BAM.
If the debt to Viaduct is not settled within the stated deadline, each day of delay will cost the state 18.873 BAM.
BiH has still not reached a final solution for paying the debt to the Slovenian company Viaduct.
Initially, the Council of Ministers of BiH proposed that the debt of the entity Republika Srpska (RS) be paid from the budget of BiH, however, the Prime Minister of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) Nermin Niksic and the Minister of Finance Toni Kraljevic used the right of veto at the extraordinary session of the Fiscal Council of BiH held in April.
“We will not allow the money of the FBiH to be used to cover the debts of an entity that openly undermines the state. The Council of Ministers has obviously gotten carried away, but they can freely hang that directive on a cat’s tail,” Niksic said at the time.
Later, the Council of Ministers of BiH adopted the plan of Finance Minister Srdjan Amidzic to take 200 million BAM from the Central Bank of BiH (CBBiH) in order to pay the debt to “Viaduct,” however, that institution stated that it would not make its money available.
It should be recalled that the Government of RS in 2007 terminated the concession with HES Vrbas, because of which, by court decision, it is necessary to pay the Slovenian company Viaduct more than 110 million BAM in damages.
Initially, that amount was about 30 million BAM, but due to avoidance of payment, the interest increased, and that figure reached 110 million BAM this year.
Because of RS’s debt to the Slovenian company Viaduct, BiH Air Navigation Services Agency (BHANSA) also got into trouble, and the Ministry of Finance and Treasury of BiH recently paid the first tranche of money in the amount of nine million and 200 thousand BAM for March, April, and May of this year, Klix.ba writes.
