Federal Minister of Finance, Jelka Milicevic, spoke at the coordination meeting of HDZ officials in Neum about the fiscal and financial issues of local communities, stating that only the municipality of Neum in 2020 generated higher revenues than a year earlier.
“We exchanged the results of the analysis of revenues in 2020 and development and trends in economic parameters in the first four and five months of this year,” told Minister Milicevic to thereporters after a meeting between Dragan Covic, the president of the HDZ Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and county prime ministers, mayors, and the chiefs of the mentioned party.
Revenues in all municipalities, she added, were lower than in 2019 as was expected, except for Neum, which recorded revenue growth despite the pandemic.
“This time and these aggravating circumstances for many municipalities, were an advantage for Neum due to the good tourist season in 2020, and the Federation recognized that so that municipality received certain awards as a tourist destination in 2020,” Federal Minister emphasized.
She stated that the meeting reaffirmed the policy of the HNS and HDZ BiH, which means strengthening local self-government units, more precisely ensuring a unified policy of creating better conditions for all citizens in local communities.
Also, she promised to continue financial support from higher levels of government to local governments, which, she said, can only expect to reach the level of public revenues they had in the first quarter of 2020 (before the pandemic), in the second half of 2021.
Besides that, a set of laws that are in the parliamentary procedure was discussed in Neum, and the Minister particularly pointed out that a new law on the protection of families with children with special needs is being worked on.
“We talked about one of the parents being registered as a state official who will have employment status. In that law, we proposed that such parents be employees of social work centers in municipality office,” added Milicevic, Radio Sarajevo writes.
