Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is once again nailed to the regional bottom in terms of the inflow of direct foreign investments, thus continuing the infamous trend from previous years.
At the back
In 2021, BiH attracted only 519 million dollars of direct foreign investments. Serbia, which is once again the regional champion in terms of inflow of direct foreign investments, by comparison, attracted 4.56 billion dollars last year, or almost ten times more than BiH. In dollars!
Before BiH is also Montenegro, with only 600 thousand inhabitants, which attracted 664 million dollars of direct foreign investments. 606 million dollars were invested in North Macedonia.
It is interesting that, although it is a member of the European Union (EU), neighboring Croatia also records a very low level of direct foreign investments, in which only 569 million dollars were invested last year.
On the other hand, even though, according to the number of inhabitants, it is almost twice as small as BiH, Slovenia attracted 1.52 billion dollars of direct foreign investments in 2021.
And while in BiH there are continuous political tensions and conflicts regarding the state structure, competencies, the Electoral Law, etc., until then investors generally bypass our country. This, of course, should not be surprising, because how can anyone expect their capital to be safe in a country that is at the top of Europe in terms of corruption, where the bureaucratic hell, political instability, and even frequent threats of war await them.
Investment recovery
Although BiH still remains at the back when it comes to investments, lagging even behind the countries of the region with a much smaller population, things have significantly improved globally compared to the pandemic year 2020. At the global level, investments have reached the level since before the pandemic and amounted to 1.6 billion dollars.
International project financing and cross-border deals experienced a particularly strong momentum. On the other hand, it is worrying that the recovery of greenfield investment is still very fragile. Economists predict that in 2022 there will be an increase in direct foreign investments.
However, a significant blow to the recovery will certainly be given by the war in Ukraine and the deep disruptions in the market that have occurred regarding the supply of energy and food.
Nothing new
The inflow of direct foreign investments in BiH in 2020 amounted to 395 million dollars. And in 2020, the regional leader was Serbia with 2.9 billion dollars of investments.
663 million dollars flowed into Montenegro, and 1.304 billion dollars into Croatia, Avaz writes.
E.Dz.
