The keynote speaker at today’s session of Circle 99 on the topic “Structural Weaknesses of the Dayton System and Their Cost: Demographic and Economic Insights”, professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade and member of the House of Representatives of the FBiH Parliament, Admir Čavalić, stated that Bosnia and Herzegovina experienced general depopulation from 1991 to 2023, losing more than a million inhabitants, which represents more than 25 percent of the total population in 1991.
He pointed out that this decline is the result of a combination of factors: war and ethnic cleansing during the 1990s, negative natural growth, mass migration (especially of young and working-age people), and socioeconomic problems that persist today.
He reminded that the average age of the population is around 43 years with a tendency to increase, which makes us a demographically old nation with the share of people over 65 years of age exceeding 20 percent (the share of pensioners is over 21 percent in the FBiH entity and over 25 percent in the RS entity).
Čavalić stated that at the moment in Bosnia and Herzegovina there are around 740,000 pensioners with a tendency to increase and only 853,000 employees with a short-term tendency to decrease, which in the long term undermines the systems of intergenerational solidarity and threatens a general socioeconomic collapse.
He believes that unlike some other transitional countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina lacks market dynamics, which is best seen through the lack of foreign and domestic investment.
Čavalić believes that the Dayton settlement in its current form is not adapted to a modern market economy, but instead creates a complex, expensive and uncoordinated system of government that hinders economic growth, deters investments and prevents the implementation of reforms.
Some of the useful reforms he sees include: fiscal harmonization, rationalization of public administration, greater coordination at the state level, strengthening of the single economic space and single labor market, digitalization, resolving issues of state property, etc.
