Rumors are getting louder that Republika Srpska is over-indebted and that this year it will have debts worth more than one billion marks, which is almost a fifth of the budget. New debts of up to one billion BAM are also planned. The authorities in Republika Srpska, although they have been intensively trying to find creditors in recent months around the world, claim that this entity is not over-indebted and that it responsibly manages its public finances.
Republika Srpska is looking for money everywhere. During his recent visit to China, Prime Minister Radovan Višković, among other things, discussed new responsibilities. Some believe that Chinese loans were the main reason for his trip. Al Jazeera correspondent from Washington, Ivica Puljić, in a statement for FACE television, said that the President of the RS Milorad Dodik asked Viktor Orban for half a billion euros, but that the Hungarians refused this request.
“Dodik requested 500 million euros from the OTP bank in Budapest, Hungary. He was rejected. They thanked me politely and said that they refused, that they could not do it”.
The opposition believes that the government in the RS has been borrowing uncontrollably for years and that it could soon find itself in big problems because of this.
“Republika Srpska is on the verge of financial collapse, despite the increase in VAT and tax collection revenues. There’s no telling how much money they can spend. The bubble that is about to burst could explode this summer or fall”, Nebojsa Vukanovic, president of the List for Justice and Order, said.
All stories about enormous indebtedness are spins and misleading the public. RS manages its public finances responsibly and is not over-indebted, claims Prime Minister Radovan Višković.
“We currently have public and total debt significantly below the criteria prescribed by international and world standards. “I don’t know why there is so much talk about these things as if someone is committing a crime against their own people,” Višković said.
Economist Zoran Pavlović points out that the practice of returning old debts to new liabilities is widespread around the world. The bigger problem, he adds, is what the loans are spent on.
“We need to be very careful and somehow slow down capital investments, and invest much more in agriculture and the real sector that can export products from BiH”.
Who is in charge, the opposition that claims that RS is on the verge of financial collapse or the government that says that debt servicing is out of the question will be known very soon, more precisely on June 28, when the debt of 330 million BAM, created on the basis of the issue of bonds on the Vienna Stock Exchange, comes due five years ago.
