After the election curtain comes down, the return to the harsh financial reality. While the citizens were following the election results, the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced a tender for the purchase of four new, expensive vehicles worth 420 thousand KM. Almost half a million marks of the people’s money is spent on luxury, while economic experts set off red alarms. With a total debt that is measured in billions, Bosnia and Herzegovina no longer has room to patch budget holes with new loans, unless they create new value.
While the public’s attention was focused on the counting of ballots, the institutions counted hundreds of thousands of marks of public money for the renewal of the vehicle fleet. The luxurious tender of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly, worth almost half a million marks, went almost unnoticed, but once again exposed the government’s stepmotherly attitude towards citizens’ money. And the state
measured by entity coffers, it has been living on credit for a long time. Economists warn that there is no room for new borrowing to cover budget holes, unless they are aimed at creating new value and investments.
“The story of politicians that we can borrow up to 75 percent of GDP does not hold water, especially not from the economic aspect”, says Adnan Rovcanin, professor at the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo
Professor Rovčanin warns that economic theory cannot be stretched according to political wishes. He hopes that the new authorities will finally show an ear for the real problems of the citizens, which until now no one has seriously dealt with. And these problems were directly financed by pre-election populism.
The fact that almost 80 million marks of public money, which had not previously been planned in any budget, was spent at all levels during the election campaign is shocking.
“Part of the funds certainly came from debt, because we only had the example of 16 million marks from the Government of the RS for high school students and students, which were not previously planned in the budget at all”, says Damjan Ozegovic from Transparency International BiH.
Citizens, in addition to their own indebtedness of the household budget, are aware that institutions borrow to enable budget payments. And they know very well who will return it all.
Additional pressure on budgets is created by the less favorable structure of domestic borrowing through commercial banks and frequent auctions of treasury notes on domestic stock exchanges, which carry high interest rates due to a worse credit rating.
