Drivers in BiH paid a total of 637 million BAM for road maintenance in the last three years, but less than 445 million BAM were actually used for that purpose, as reported from Transparency International in BiH.
The analysis conducted by Transparency International in BiH showed that a total of 191.7 million were not allocated to road companies in the period from 2015 to 2017. According to this, almost every third BAM from the road maintenance toll was spent on patching budget holes and repayment of debts, although the Law on Excises clearly stated that it is a dedicated money.
“Drivers in BiH pay an excise tax on every liter of fuel, and its purpose is determined by the entity governments and two tolls that are defined by law, one for the maintenance and construction of roads and the other for the construction of highways. Regardless of the legislation, 0.15 BAM dedicated for the roads in the analyzed period did not end up on the accounts of the road companies, which was clearly shown by the official documents of the entity governments, and the difference between what was collected and what was invested in the roads drastically increased from year to year,” they stated.
They also noted that the Indirect Taxation Authority of BiH transfers money from the tolls together with all other revenues from VAT, customs and excise taxes to entities.
“Due to the specific method of redistribution between entities, local communities and toll companies, the amount of money that goes to roads is much smaller. The first reason is the increase of internal debt, and the second is that certain estimates that road companies will receive more money due to economic development and increase of VAT revenue were not realized. In fact, the opposite happened,” stated from Transparency International.
(Source: klix.ba)
