Last year, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) imported 54.520 tons of bananas, mostly from Slovenia, Croatia, and Ecuador, 13.941 tons of lemons from Turkey, and 19.739 tons of apples from Poland, Italy, and Serbia, and oranges from Greece, 13.032 tons.
The same goes for vegetables. Thus, the citizens of BiH ate tomatoes from Turkey and Albania, as well as peppers that were also imported from North Macedonia.
These are the official data of the Foreign Trade Chamber of BiH for 2021, while the data for the current year are not yet available.
For the sake of comparison, farmers in our country successfully grow most of these foods, except, for example, bananas and pineapples.
The import of tomatoes costs 16.756.921 BAM, and Nedzad Bico, president of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) Farmers’ Association, commented:
”It’s like they bought 20 million bullets so they can shoot us again. In fact, the absurdities cannot be greater. The problem is a small allocation for our farmers, people are not competitive. Our product is always much more expensive than the imported ones. I would not discuss the quality relationship, because ours is much better, but price plays a key role here.
Watermelon and melon were imported for 6.626.280 BAM in 2020, while 10.137.795 BAM was spent in 2021. Even apples and pears, which BiH abounds in, were imported for 15.846.117 BAM last year, which is 30.99 percent less than the year before when 22.962.372 BAM were spent on the import of these products.
Ad-Blue
”All countries in the world, even in the region, allocate much more funds for food production, in fact, they give incentives to agricultural producers. Their production is far cheaper than ours. It is also logical that this product, when it comes here, is cheaper than ours. This has been shown through all productions. We don’t have the basic things here, like Ad-Blue. You have Croatia, which is closest to us, it allocates more than 2 billion BAM for agricultural production. And how will you be competitive with someone when the entire state allocates less than 200 million,” noted Bico.
Re-export of products
”Bananas do not grow in Croatia either, but this is a so-called re-export, they import and sell to us. This is also the case with lemon, for example. And even if there is a lemon here, people grow it for personal use. We can produce enough for the needs of the citizens of this country and have a lot of those goods for export. The state should make specific moves, allocate more funds, introduce Ad-Blue, and create a ministry at the state level so that we can get European funds. But, according to this policy now, that will not happen,” Bico pointed out.
