The representatives of the Sarajevo Canton Assembly are considering today the Sarajevo Canton Budget Proposal for 2023, which amounts to 1,438,896,538 BAM.
The approved draft of the CS Budget for 2023 was 1,193,051,372 BAM, but during the public hearing, 127 subjects expressed their views, with more than 400 million BAM of additional requests in the Budget Proposal.
The subjects’ requests came from the fields of veterans’ issues, spatial planning and communal activities, internal affairs, education, higher education, science and youth, culture and sports, social policy, traffic, economy, justice and administration, health, municipalities and others.
Therefore, the total revenue potential in the CS Budget Proposal for 2023 compared to the KS Draft Budget for 2023 is higher by 245,845,166 BAM and amounts to 1,438,896,538 BAM.
CS Finance Minister Emir Dedović, presenting the proposed budget, said that, although he only recently took office, BAM 1,438,896,538 is a respectable budget, which is a record at the moment, it is not bureaucratic, but it is optimistic.
He believes that it is a “brave” budget proposal for those who need to implement it. Although it is not easy to implement, it is “prepared so that everyone gets a little more responsibility to do more”.
“Therefore, it also fits into our measures that we gave during the coalition agreement, which is to try to collect everything that is an obligation through laws given to the canton’s budget. We must rationally review all the authorities and their spending within the budget,” said Delić.
Although he did not have much time, he says, to analyze the Budget Proposal, he largely agrees that there was room to raise the Budget Proposal compared to the draft.
Percentage-wise, as he explained, about 42 percent of the budget goes to salaries, 40 percent to current grants, and 18 percent to capital investments, which is “not bad, but not what we should strive for.”
Our plans and goals, emphasized Dedović, are to try to make a step forward in the capital space in the CS budget, which is the only one that ensures development in the coming period.
“We have a budget that needs to be supported because a lot of citizens are waiting for it. If it doesn’t go well, we will try to offer new, better redistribution solutions, or a budget rebalancing that could be fixed where we think it should be,” concluded the newly appointed CS Finance Minister Emir Dedović.