A month and a half ago, the General Assembly of the European Chamber of Commerce, aware of the problems faced by businessmen within the zone, and with the aim of increasing their competitiveness and establishing a regulatory balance within the business environment, made a decision to reduce standards by 25 percent. In the last period, the European business community was exposed to a large number of significant new political initiatives and legal proposals, which created a problem for companies in meeting the requirements, especially in the field of green transition and environmental, social, and business management. While Europe protects the economy with concrete measures, Bosnia and Herzegovina businessmen are left to themselves.
The increase in legal regulations, especially during the pandemic, made it difficult for businessmen to do business at the EU level and caused ambiguities. That is why the administration of the European Chamber of Commerce made a decision to significantly reduce the standards. While the Commission’s new goal to reduce reporting requirements by 25% and its commitment to regular competition checks are welcome, a more fundamental reset and an approach based on preventing burdens, rather than removing them, is needed.
A businessman who has to apply it – becomes confused, says Vjekoslav Vuković, vice-president of Foreign Trade Chamber of BiH: “Today there is this law, then after the law you have a rulebook, then you have an instruction, then after an instruction an opinion… You become crowded. A lot had to do with health and transport – these are two segments that were well affected, there are always some rules, especially because of the pandemic”
BH carriers whose borders are a permanent transit route claim that they are losing patience, but also their competitiveness on the foreign market.
“Trucks are delayed a lot at the borders, and then they are late for unloading,” says driver Anto Sinanović.
His colleague Dragan Crnadak adds that it would be desirable in the field of transport to simplify procedures – we witness, he says, daily columns at the entry-exit borders.
While Europe is revising the rules with the aim of supporting businessmen, the authorities in our country are not reacting. Economic issues are overshadowed by political ones. They are encouraged by income from VAT, but also by the possibility of additional borrowing.
“The system according to which the collection of VAT is not related to the sale of goods and services has led our politicians to have 80 percent of the income in the budgets as a burden of VAT, and only 20 percent as a burden of direct taxes, that is, the efficiency of company operations. Bearing that in mind, they are absolutely not interested in what is happening in the economy, because the administration does not live on those revenues,” claims economic analyst Zoran Pavlović.
Director of the FBiH Employers’ Association, Mario Nenadić, explains: “Everything that the EU does within Europe protects the European business community.” For us who come from other countries, where we are uncompetitive for other reasons – the cost of labor, fiscal and parafiscal burdens, weak infrastructure – we have to start thinking that we are part of Europe”.
In addition to ineffective regulations, employers in Bosnia and Herzegovina have another problem that is becoming dominant. The lack of manpower is also evident in European countries, which, unlike ours, have strategies for attracting the necessary personnel.
“In the Federation, we constantly point out that we have 280,000 people on the unemployment register, but of that – we claim that there are no more than 35-40,000 on the registers of active job seekers. “A large number of contracts that our employers have with suppliers of goods in Europe are being canceled – we don’t have the workforce, we can’t meet the deadlines,” Nenadić points out.
BH businessmen are afraid that the positions on the foreign market, which they have fought hard for, will be wasted without the necessary support from the domestic authorities. And after that, going back to the old ways will be hard to come by.
