Nezavisne novine: BiH is among the world countries, whose salary balance mostly depends on the inflow of money from guest-workers, which for the expected downturn of foreign transfers represents significant threat for economic stability of country, has been concluded by domestic economists.
According to the new report of the World Bank, value of transfers from the abroad in BiH was more than 2.7 billion dollars (around 3.8 billion KM by current currency), which is 17.8% of the gross domestic product of country.
BiH has been placed at 14th place in the world and the 2nd place in Europe, behind Moldavia, to which the value of transfers exceeds even 1/3 of gross domestic product. From the countries of region, the closest to us are Serbia and Albania, with the values of foreign transfers in relation to the gross domestic product of 13.9, or 13.6%, while significantly lower dependency have Macedonia and Croatia, with 4.5, or 2.7%.
Economists warn that the World Bank has reduced this year’s predictions of inflow of transfers for developing countries, among which BiH is, by expecting the global downturn of 7.3% in relation to the last year’s amount, while the downturn was earlier projected by 5%. The biggest downturn of foreign transfers in the amount of 15% is being predicted for the region of Europe and middle Asia. Pessimistic predictions, as it has been stated in the World Bank, are coming due to the lack of jobs and worsening of economic situation in the countries, which are the target of immigrants in the first half of this year.
Fuad Kasumović, Deputy Minister of Finance and Treasury of BiH, thinks that a value of transfers from abroad in BiH exceeds 20% of gross domestic product, by pointing out that our guest-workers bring a lot of money in cash, while the official reports follow only inflows over banks.
"There is no dilemma that the global recession and the reduction of number of employed and height of salary on the West reflects on our citizens, who work there, because the immigrants will be the first ones to lose their jobs, but not the domestic population", has been said by Kasumović.
Stevo Pucar, Macro-economy expert in the Association of economists of the RS – SWOT, confirms that BiH is very dependent on foreign transfers, especially because we are a small and open economy with low competence.
"If the projections of the World Bank on downturn of transfers of 15% for this part of the world get realized, it would bring to the downturn of expenditure of our citizens and it would worsen the condition in economy", he has said.
Pucar, however, points out that in the first three-month period of this year, according to the data of the Central bank of BiH, there is no evidenced downturn of current transfers, which mostly consists of foreign transfers, but in the contrast, their moderate increase has been recorded.
"It is hard to estimate how this will be by the end of this year, but, according to the previous trend, I believe that the downturn of transfers will, however, be smaller than 15%", Pucar has said.