Political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina received around 15.5 million BAM from the budgets of all levels of government in BiH in 2020, according to data from annual financial reports published by the BiH Central Election Commission.
“That is somewhat less than in previous years when over 18 million BAM were paid to the parties, and the reason is that the Federation of BiH planned half the amount from the budget compared to previous years.
1.1 million less was allocated from the cantonal level, while the RS planned a larger allocation for political parties compared to the previous year, but the entire amount has not been paid yet,” Transparency International BiH (TIBiH) stated in a press
As TI BiH further underlines, the parties in their reports mainly show revenues from the budget, and in 2020, it amounted to as much as 72 percent of the total revenues, which amounts to 21.5
On the other hand, the political parties claim that they have very few donations from private companies, and those donations are as much as 50 percent less than in 2016 when they amounted to around 700,000 BAM.
“As in previous years, a large part of these contributions came from illegal sources, i.e. companies that had concluded agreements with the executive authorities, a large number of parties stopped reporting donations altogether. For example, the SNSD has not shown a single KM of donations from private companies in its reports in the past four years.
TI BiH reminds that at the end of last year, the parties presented around 357,000 BAM of contributions from legal entities, “and a large part of them was prohibited by the Law on Financing of Political Parties because companies that donated to political parties had contracts with executive authorities.
Earlier, after publishing the parties’ post-election reports, TI BiH filed charges with the CEC against 10 political parties for receiving 17 illegal contributions, and now three more charges have been submitted, two against the SDA and one against the HDZ BiH.
In the context of the cost of the election campaign, TI BiH states that in its annual reports, the 15 largest parties in BiH have shown the campaign expenses in the amount of five
This amount is far less than the real one because TI BiH determined through monitoring that these parties spent at least 6.7 million BAM on only two forms of advertising (billboards and media advertising) including the election rallies.
TI BiH warns that for years it has pointed out the shortcomings of the Law on Financing of Political Parties, which allows parties to bypass the reporting of all revenues and expenditures, as shown by the annual financial reports.
