Public investments represent an important precondition for achieving planned growth rate of GDP presented in macroeconomic scenario of the Extended arrangement with IMF, which are revised in the Report of IMF staff from February 2018, as noted at the conference “Public investments in BiH: how ready are we,” that took plane in organization of the Center for Policy and Management.
According to the published projections of economics trends, BiH should achieve GDP growth of 3.2 % in the year of 2018, 3.5 % in 2019 and 3.7 % in 2020, and in order to achieve that scenario, it is required to reach the share of public investments of 5.5 % of GDP in 2018, 6.8 % of GDP in 2019 and 7.6 % in 2020, i.e. total public investments in the next three years should amount to 6.92 billion BAM.
Considering the fact that the increase of excise duties on oil and petroleum products largely increased the capacity of financing infrastructure projects in country, and affected readiness of international loan institutions to continue with their investments in BiH, as noted at the conference, it is important to know what is the real dynamics of realization of those investment projects.
Secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Transport BiH Igor Pejic noted the importance of the construction of Corridor 5C, and he also added that determined deadline for opening of the bridge over Sava River near Svilaj will be respected. He noted that the inability for effective implementation of tenders slowed down some of the more important public investment projects.
This year, EBRD is planning to invest around 100 million EUR in BiH, according to Polic, and the same pace is announced during the next three years. However, a more important growth depends on finding ways to include foreign private capital in the sector. Effectiveness of private sector would be good for process of implementation of public investment projects.
According to the entity programs of public investment for period 2018-2020, the value of projects with ensured funding amounts to 3.8 billion BAM in the FBiH and 2.94 billion BAM in the RS, and it amounts to 6.74 billion BAM in three years period.
(Source: klix.ba)
