Oslobođenje: Intensive preparations for the rebalance of this year’s budget of the FBiH are current in the Federal Government. At the same time, the Government prepares an intercession law on salaries and remunerations, which do not have a character of salaries of employed in the institutions of the Federation, cantons and municipalities, out-budget funds, directorates for roads and current transfers at all government levels.
As Oslobođenje finds out, first draft of the intercession law has been prepared by the Ministry of Finance. The Government will deliberate on it in the package with the proposal rebalance of this year’s federal budget.
Cuts at all levels
Rebalance, together with the proposal intercession law will be found before the Government before the end of this month, and at the beginning of June in parliamentary procedure, has been confirmed in yesterday’s statement for our paper by the Minister of Finance, Vjekoslav Bevanda.
Paid the 156 million debt from 2008
The Federal Ministry of Finance has yesterday paid 156 million KM of the budget deficit from 2008 from the total unrealized around 260 million KM. -The Ministry has on Thursday paid 19.1 million KM of debt for the old foreign currency saving, has been said by Deputy Minister of Finance, Petar Ivošević. He has added that the stimulations for agriculture have been paid earlier (25 million KM), debt to Railways of the FBiH (4.6 million), PDI Institute (12.2 million), for business development (6.7 million), for refugees and displaced (3.9 million), and debt to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Police administration. He has added that yesterday there have been paid obligations from 2008 for the projects, in whose co-financing there is also the FBiH, in the amount of 3.3 million KM and obligations for stimulation of development of environment and tourism of 4.6 million KM, Ivošević has said. – In the next days, we will pay the debts to the ministries of healthcare (11.8 million), education (18.3 million) and culture and sport (7.3 million), Ivošević has added. The Deputy Minister, Tihomir Ćurak has said that the consequences of not adopting of law on old foreign currency saving in the FBiH can be long-lasing, because the savers will not be able to come to the possession of their belongings in a manner as it has been planned, through security papers. By the basis of old foreign currency saving, there have been paid 73 million KM, verified 450 million, and 70.000 persons has proceeded to verification.
Before that, officials of the BiH Government will have to get conciliation from cantonal and municipal governments. Namely, this is the first time that the Federal Government prepares the law, which will harmonize public spending with budget revenues, not only at the federal level, but also at cantonal and municipal levels as well.
Certain preparations have been made at the meetings of officials of mentioned government levels in Fojnica and Sarajevo, which have been attended by the MMF Delegation, with which the BiH governments have agreed on the stand-by arrangement, which would in the next three years ensure a credit of around 1.2 billion Euros. New meeting of the Federal Government with cantonal governments and representatives of towns and municipalities will be held on Wednesday already.
– Consolidation will have to be implemented at all government levels in the FBiH, because it is an obligation overtaken in negotiations with the MMF. It does not mean anything if we are going to make savings only at federal level, Bevanda has said. The Federal budget will by this rebalance be reduced by 177 million KM, from around 1.6 billion to around 1.423 billion KM. Rebalances of budget of cantons is necessary, in order to achieve the reduction of 240 million, while the total reduction of municipal budgets will be 20 million, and the reductions in out-budget funds 6.2 million KM.
-intercession law stipulates the reduction of expenditures of all government levels from 10 to 50 %, has been found out by the source of Oslobođenje, close to the FBiH Government and added: Financial effect of this law will be 530 million KM for all government levels, which means a balance of expenditures with budget revenues.
They cancel the contracts
All this, as it has been claimed by our source, will have to be applied from the beginning of this year, so the cuts are better to make as soon as possible.
– intercession law stipulates the reduction of food allowance and regress at all government levels by 50%, reduction of salaries of public administration 10 % in relation to December last year. Even though we are in the fifth month, in implementation of these measures we will have to take into consideration the whole year, has been explained by our source.
Intercession law also stipulates the abolishment of remunerations for work in commissions, as well as the contract based remunerations. As we find out, only from the federal budget, there are remunerations being paid for around 200 contracts each month.