The COVID-19 pandemic is over. For Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH), this does not mean the end of the problem, because it is unable to return the money for the vaccines it procured during the pandemic.
In the only state procurement through the COVAX mechanism, about 13 million dollars were paid for 1,23,000 vaccines. The contract was signed in September 2020, and the first doses of the vaccine via the COVAX mechanism arrived in March 2021 at the airport in Sarajevo.
COVAX is the world’s largest vaccine exchange program against COVID-19, led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) together with the World Health Organization.
As of 2021, only a third of this program was delivered to BiH.
In January of this year, GAVI informed BiH that it could no longer deliver vaccines, which is why BiH is demanding money for the value of the undelivered vaccines.
GAVI demands that BiH pay an “exit fee” that includes their costs in that process, to which BiH does not agree.
According to information from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the compensation would cost about 1.7 million dollars.
What kind of response is BiH preparing?
BiH has the possibility to initiate arbitration proceedings before the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague. In order to do that, it is necessary that the BiH Council of Ministers instructs the Office of the Attorney General of BiH to do so.
Mladjan Madic, the chief ombudsman of BiH, told that this conclusion has not yet been adopted by the Council of Ministers of BiH.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs of BiH stated that “intensive work is being done” on proposing the solution, without defining whether the initiation of international arbitration is one of the options.
What do BiH entities say?
Previously, in February, the Government of the RepublikaSrpska (RS), one of the two BiH entities, rejected the proposal for the Agreement on early termination of the Vaccine Purchase Agreement offered by GAVI.
800,000 vaccines were to be delivered to the Federation of BiH (FBiH), for which, according to the Audit Report, more than 13,700,000 BAM (about 8 million dollars) were paid. Of the paid vaccines, 218,510 doses were delivered to the FBiH.
From Brcko District it was explained that they are asking for the return of 430,000 BAM (about 243 thousand dollars), Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
