For every new employee in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there are two pensioners. This is how economists describe the new data on the pension system of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Compared to last year, there are more than four thousand fewer employees in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. How worrying is the situation in which there are more pensioners than workers, and how can we ensure stable pension funds and dignified pensions?
For a better future standard of pensioners, it is important, as the interviewees say, to stay in employment as long as possible, to achieve greater length of service and salaries, which will ultimately ensure a stable financial pension system.
However, a stable employment relationship with income worthy of a normal life in Bosnia and Herzegovina is increasingly difficult to achieve.
The Federation of Pensioners’ Associations of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina claims that the key is better collection of contributions, greater employment, and amendments to the Law on Pension and Disability Insurance.
“For June, 458,322 pensioners received pensions, according to the Tax Administration data, there are 545,000 employees in the Federation. So the situation is extremely serious,” warns Haso Halilović, deputy chairman of the Board of the Federation of Pensioners’ Associations.
Stabilizing the political situation would make a big step towards resolving the situation in which there are fewer and fewer workers and less money from pension contributions, claims economist Igor Gavran. Without that, there is no attraction of new and foreign investments, which would open new jobs and improve the situation on the labor market.
“We cannot have new employees without new investments and starting new businesses. We can get that through domestic investments, by expanding domestic companies if the Government creates a more favorable business environment for them, lower business costs, lower taxes and contributions,” emphasizes Gavran.
The state of the pension system in the Federation of BiH will soon be discussed by the House of Representatives of the Federal Parliament. The Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, which is the proponent of this topic, is of the opinion that it will not provide information until it is discussed at the session. Data and various projections that were proposed in the previous period, regarding the PIO system, were submitted to parliamentarians.
“Since 2018, as the available data we received from the relevant ministry shows, we have two pensioners for every worker. This creates a series of structural problems for our system and makes it unstable,” says SBiH representative in the ZD PFBiH Admir Čavalić, Federalna writes.
