The Council of Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals held a public lecture entitled “The property of the state of BiH – a resource for development”, at which was discussed the establishment of the fund for the development of BiH. Attendees were addressed by the former member of the Presidency of BiH and Head of BH Diplomacy, Haris Silajdzic.
Silajdzic noted that they gathered on this occasion not to evaluate the current state, but to offer a solution and that the solution is to place the state property in the function of development and recovery of the state of BiH.
“State property is the way out of the crisis. We have demonstrated the potential for the crisis. The potential for effective solutions that are possible – not so much, although there were certain attempts. The state property was current in this period from 1994. During the war, we have turned the public property into the state property. After this, there was a long period of trying to prove what is very clear in the Dayton Agreement, and that is that the state has ownership over the state property. That looks a little bit strange, but it is like that. We had 12 years of intensive proving that it is like that, and before that, we had to prove it as well, which means that there was a certain resistance to that fact,” stated Silajdzic.
He added that in the Dayton Agreement, in the clause on the continuity of Article 1 of Annex 4, it is clearly noted that the state of BiH continues to exist under the same rights and obligations as any other country.
“The state has shown the potential and capacity to regulate the issue of state property in the best way possible, after a long political and legal battle in which people were involved. We start from the fact that the state property belongs to every citizen of BiH. Although this is the aspect of some social justice which was not much presented in the post-war period, this is the opportunity to achieve at least partially, what is right, thus to put into operation this great resource that would be available to all citizens of BiH through a fund for development,” explained Silajdzic.
According to him, this way and model are present in the world, and it showed to be the best way to protect state property and put it into operation at the same time.
He also noted that on the basis of documents that are kept in the building of the Presidency of BiH, 56 % of the surface area is state property, of which 70 % are forests, 20 % are meadows etc.
“That is one part of state property and it represents a great treasure. We want this development fund to be a kind of collateral for investors. Regardless if they are our domestic investors or foreign investors who will never invest without certain guarantee. However, this topic is not current, like there is some kind of blockage on it,” stated Haris Silajdzic.
He added that people who are not familiar with the situation say that these are some barracks, but barracks are just small part of it.
“Military assets is part of the state property but it is only a small percentage of what we have. What we have is a lot safer than money because money can be wasted. State property – hardly. We have enormous wealth, and it is time to do something that generations to come will be grateful for,” said Silajdzic.
The lecturers on this meeting were Prof. Dr. Haris Silajdzic, Prof. Dr. Sead Avdic, Prof. Dr. Mirsad Kikanovic and Prof. Dr. Rifat Klopic.
(Source: I. C./Klix.ba)
