The Chairperson of the Joint Commission for Economic Reforms and Development of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH (PSBiH), Ermina Salkičević-Dizdarević, stated today that it is necessary to raise awareness of the importance of supporting agricultural producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially considering that BiH imports more than 65 percent of food, while at the same time millions hectares of land remain uncultivated.
Before the beginning of the thematic session on the topic “Agriculture of Bosnia and Herzegovina, state and challenges of necessary reforms” organized by this commission, Salkičević-Dizdarević said that it was the first in a series of thematic sessions that they defined as a priority, and was dedicated to agriculture and agricultural production in Bosnia and Herzegovina, taking into account the importance of this economic branch.
“We are witnessing huge climate changes, problems with support to agricultural producers, problems with the budgets of institutions, but huge shortcomings of our country when it comes to legislation and preparation for pre-accession aid to European Union funds. From that aspect, we want to use today’s session as a session that will raise awareness of the necessity to talk openly about this topic in order to improve the position of agricultural production in BiH”, added Salkičević-Dizdarević.
She emphasized that they especially want to discuss and point out the lack of harmonized regulations, which would help our agricultural producers to have much more financial support for their business.
“Our goal is to raise awareness of the importance of supporting agricultural producers in the way institutions should work. The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina is responsible for foreign trade policy and thus for creating policy in the field of agricultural production, and in this sense it has a huge task and a big job ahead of it when it comes to agricultural production together with the agencies within the Ministry,” Salkičević added. – Dizdarević.
According to her, in addition to support for agricultural producers, the media often mentions the missing IPARD structure in terms of pre-accession assistance to countries that are not members of the European Union. She emphasized that IPARD does not mean only financial resources, but huge changes and work when it comes to legislation in our country.
“I think we have the potential, I’m sure we have the people, but we need to give them support both as institutions and as individuals without any politics, but simply to do our own work”, pointed out Salkičević-Dizdarević.
The President of the Federation of BiH Peasants’ Association, Dragan Pavlović, said that today’s thematic session is important for the agriculture sector.
“Agricultural producers from FBiH and RS have been persistently looking for a way to protect domestic agricultural production for 15 years, and we have not managed to make even a millimeter of progress in this regard. I hope that after this thematic session of the BiH institution, I will try to find ways to protect domestic agricultural production. No matter how much money the entities allocate for support, if we do not protect domestic production, it will have no effect,” Pavlović pointed out.
