In a country like ours, where we rely on food imports, the new increase in energy prices is like a trigger, and the chain hits right in the food basket. The announcement of an increase in electricity prices by almost 20 percent further increases citizens’ fears that expenses in the coming months will be even heavier, because electricity is the basis for everything – from food production to heating.
“Food is the most expensive, too expensive compared to our standard, especially for pensioners. Prices are constantly rising, every day.”
“Everything that has to be paid, has to be paid, no matter what.”
“This is not normal! A small pension, and everything is getting more expensive.”
Citizens are saving on items that were once unthinkable: heating, medicines, quality food, hygiene products. Since food and energy costs take up a larger share of household budgets, each new price increase has a proportionally greater effect on the lowest incomes.
“Price increases are constant. And not only that, but we also have a ‘silent price increase’, so at first you don’t feel that something has become more expensive, you only see it when you compare it over a slightly longer period,” points out Jovan Vasilić, president of the Consumer Protection Association Zvono Bijeljina.
According to data from the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the annual consumer price rate in June was around 4.6 percent. Core inflation, which does not even include food and energy, still exceeds four percent. But behind the statistics lies a much more painful calculation: the choice between utilities and food. Between going to the doctor and going to work. Between life and survival.
“The biggest problem will be with food. The government does not have commodity reserves to intervene, nor does it have its own oil reserves to stock up and intervene in the market. It happens that the worse off the people are, the better off the government is. Inflation is beneficial to the government, because rising prices bring higher VAT,” emphasized economic analyst Prof. Aleksa Milojević.
And while the government boasts of stability, domestic food production is falling to its knees. Farmers, burdened with expensive raw materials and meager support, are becoming an exotic species, increasingly rare and less sustainable. That is why imports are booming, and with them the prices that come to us, as they say, “from abroad”.
“The situation is not good and this will be most reflected on consumers, and the most consumers are pensioners and farmers. A bad situation and a bad system. We farmers have always been optimistic that one day everything will return to normal life and normal flows, but this is not leading to anything,” warns Savo Bakajlić, president of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Semberija and Majevica.
And while prices are rising in silence, and institutions are silent in unison, the only thing that is certain is that the coming months will be even more difficult. The citizens of this country have already learned to survive without luxury. But increasingly, without basic dignity. In a country whose authorities are used to bragging about records, no one will admit one thing: the record struggle of ordinary people to survive a month.
