Snow fell in Slovenia, and the temperature dropped to -4 degrees Celsius. The first snowflakes were also recorded in Croatia, and it is a matter of days or hours when the snow will turn Bosnia and Herzegovina white.
Therefore, winter is just around the corner, which is why the biggest concern of BiH citizens how they will welcome the winter, how they will be warmed and how much money they have to allocate for these purposes. Electric heating is not favorable, this year it seems that pellet heating is even less so.
Compared to last year, a ton of pellets is twice as expensive. Currently, about 700 marks. At the same time, the manufacturer’s announcements are getting louder that it will cost up to a thousand marks, which would be a new, heavy blow to citizens’ already thin wallets. While they complain, producers also complain – because of the export ban, which is still in force.
And the ban on the export of pellets and firewood is valid until September 24. Until then, the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina should possibly extend that decision for the next three months. This is the wish of the citizens, and the request of the producers is the opposite.
“When 31.12. enable us to export, to whom will we export? In Europe, they either bought blankets or got some alternative. No wood is bought in January. So, this tree is doomed if the ban is extended,” points out Sulejman Šušić, director of the company Biobnrik Sanski Most.
“If the ban on exports is not extended, if exports start from September 24, it is to be expected that there will not be enough pellets on the domestic market. In that situation, the price at which the pellet is sold will not matter at all, it will only matter that it is there. And if the ban is extended until the end of the year, as the Government of the Federation proposed to the Council of Ministers, we can expect that there will be enough pellets and that the price will not change compared to the current one – 700-750 marks per ton”, says Muhamed Helać, manager of the company Drvosjeca .
“As for the stocks themselves, which is mentioned in the public, it is mostly not true. I can’t guarantee that some manufacturers don’t have stock, which, I can say, is also legitimate. However, in the last two weeks I have visited a dozen manufacturers who are out of stock. As soon as the pellets leave production, they are loaded into trucks and go to the market,” says Goran Ivanović, president of the Association of Pellet Producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
