Ismir Jusko, the Minister of Communications and Transport of BiH, noted that without the adoption of amendments to the Law on Excise Duties, BiH would remain without at least one billion BAM, and that citizens will feel benefits from excise laws when the construction of transport infrastructure actually starts.
According to Minister Jusko, numerous conversation with representatives of the international community were held in the last half of the year, and they insisted that BiH cannot count on a single EUR of help from them without the law on excise duties.
“Therefore, the financial flow of around billion BAM would be cut off, as well as the most recent project that we managed to achieve through a lot of hard work in the last ten months, which is Trieste. Of a total of six regional projects, four came to BiH as well as 500 million BAM, of which 96 million are grant funds, which were conditioned with the Law on Excise Duties. The second problem is that we could no longer apply for a project in the future, and we have about twenty projects that are already prepared,” noted Minister Jusko.
The Minister of Communications and Traffic added that the representatives of the European Union made it clear to him at the beginning of his mandate that without the framework Transport Strategy, BiH cannot count on any kind of help from the EC.
He also emphasized that a total of 500 million BAM, which BiH received in Trieste, were in the process of writing off, because our country did not join the Transport Community. It was necessary then to make a decision in which direction BiH will move, since those 500 million BAM could be redirected to other countries. That, according to him, would be just an initial damage to BiH, and the damages after that would be much greater.
He added that the completion of the Corridor 5C through BiH will require about 2.5 billion EUR, according to initial information.
(Source: Radiosarajevo.ba)
