The general economic and social trends in our country are extremely unfavorable, and they were especially emphasized by the coronavirus pandemics. The government is facing a great challenge on how to respond to numerous challenges, and the outflow of population has been and remains the biggest problem, Klix.ba news portal reports.
The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic best reflects the current political situation, which is dominated by a lack of proactivity, a crisis of reforms, a crisis of creativity and, finally, a crisis of success, economist Dzenan Kulovic said, as reported by Al Jazeera.
“According to statistics from the latest annual document, Systematic Diagnosis of the Country, published by the World Bank, half of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population today is the labor force of other countries,” Kulovic wrote. The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are very talented, enterprising and hardworking workers and as such represent the most important resource of the country. Unfortunately, that potential is often realized abroad, considering that half of them already live abroad, and emigration continues, warns the mentioned report.
If we summarize the key messages that the report offers, Kulovic adds, we can see that our economy is out of balance due to the simultaneous action of three key problems: the public sector has an overemphasized role, which contributes to excessive waste, then consumption is the basis of growth, which creates a certain imbalance last, an insufficiently integrated economy, which reduces export potential.
“Ensuring the sustainability of investment growth, which currently stands at 18 percent of gross domestic product, must increase. However, the aggravating circumstance is the challenges of slowing economic growth affecting almost all countries in the region. Only four percent of foreign direct investment comes from export activities. Establishing a balance requires three important changes: public capital should be privatized, which will contribute to better competitiveness, then export orientation should be strengthened, which will help strengthen export capacities and, lastly, encourage investment, which will enable investment-led growth, “he said.
According to the forecasts contained in this report, Bosnia and Herzegovina needs a hundred years to reach the standard of living currently enjoyed by European citizens. Due to such pessimistic data, some projections indicate how we can expect a decrease in the number of inhabitants (from 3.2 million to 2.7 million by 2050), which directly contributes to the increase in the number of pensioners by close to thirty percent. Our country is rapidly losing its most valuable resource – human capital, warns Kulovic.
