The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will not approve the next tranche of loan until the national institutions adopt the amendments to the Law on Excise Taxes in BiH, which will increase excise taxes by 15 fennings per liter.
The next meeting of the Board of Executives of the IMF at which it should be discussed about the payment of the second tranche of the loan should be held in mid-December. Until then the Council of Ministers should prepare the proposal of amendments to the mentioned laws and the national Parliament should adopt those amendments. If that is done, the next tranche should be paid to the entity budgets at the beginning of next year.
“The IMF defined a list of 11 previous measures. Those measures must be fulfilled before the IMF discusses the next tranche. The most important and the only dubious measure is the one pertinent to amendments to the Law on Excise Taxes – exclusively the part that refers to the increase in excise taxes on fuel. So far, the IMF does not insist on increase in other excise taxes. When it comes to other 10 previous measures, they are undisputed, their fulfillment is relatively simple and is already in progress, such as the adoption of budgets on national and entity level,” the federal government stated.
However, according to the current situation it can hardly be expected that this condition will be met in the foreseen time frame. For instance, task force for design of the new proposal of amendments to the Law on Excise Taxes, consisting of representatives of ministry of finance and treasury and the ministry of foreign trade and economic relations, as well as indirect tax administration of BiH, has still not completed its part of the job. After they prepare the draft, it will be forwarded to the Board of Executives of the Indirect Taxation Authority for opinion, then to the Council of Ministers of BiH for adoption, and then to the national parliament, where it has to be adopted in both houses in the same form.
Although it is foreseen that the IMF pays the loan quarterly – every three months – the final term will depend on the fulfillment of obligations from the Letter of Intent. That is why the entities might wait six months or more to receive the next tranche. The last Stand by arrangement with the IMF has never been implemented fully because the domestic authorities did not fulfill all obligations they assumed when that loan was approved.
(Source: fokus.ba)
