Members of the BiH Fiscal Council and a delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reached an agreement on the letter of intention providing a three-year stand-by arrangement for BiH worth 1 billion and 200 million Euro. This brought negotiations between the delegation of the Mission of the International Monetary Fund to BiH and representatives of the governments at all state levels, which had lasted for more than three weeks, to a conclusion. This entails the three-year arrangement, in quotas belonging to BiH, in the amounts of 400 million Euros at an annual level, said Mr. Nikola Špirić, chairman of the Council of Ministers at the press conference.
Furthermore, he stated that a favorable aspect is the fact that the Steering Board of the BiH Indirect Taxation Authority had agreed upon corrections regarding the Excise Law, which represented one of the measures for the arrangement with the IMF.
-Governments at all levels will be obliged to adopt the corrections of the law by the end of June, therefore, budget at the entity levels needs to be rebalanced and put forward to the parliamentary procedure so that the budgetary restructuring be concluded by the end of August. Consequently, the FBiH Government will have to provide savings in the amount of 414 million KM, Republika Srpska 146 million KM, the Council of Ministers 40 million and Brčko District 10 million KM, said Špirić and added that the entity funds allocation equaled to two thirds for the Federation BiH and one third for Republika Srpska.
According to the statement of the chairman Špirić, the amount of 1.2 billion Euros is 600 percent of the BiH quota in the IMF.
- The result achieved in the negotiations with the IMF representatives is beyond our initial expectations and proves that agreement is attainable when BiH speaks in a single voice. The goal of this package is to maintain macroeconomic stability in the medium term and similarly to provide further growth – said Mr. Špirić.
Chief of the IMF Mission in BiH, Mr. Kostas Hristu said that the authorities in BiH had spoken in one voice in the process of these negotiations, namely about the way utilizable to fight negative effects of the global economic crisis.
- A large part of this package is relative to a fiscal area, and governments with ambitious aims assumed great obligations. The first tranche for this year in the amount of 400 million Euro will be available a day after the programme has been approved by both the administration and Executive Board of the IMF, and that is going to happen in a few coming months, said Mr. Hristu (end)
