Budget Chaos Leaves Bosnian Officials Unpaid

Bosnia's Ministry Finance and Treasury was unable to approve payment of January salaries to officials paid from the state budget, the Ministry told Balkan Insight on Thursday.
 
The problem is that, owing to a bureaucratic muddle, the state budget has not been published in the Official Gazette, as a result of which the payments cannot be signed off.

Around 23,000 public workers, including ministers, deputies, advisors, directors of state agencies, soldiers and all three members of the State Presidency, did not receive any money, Fuad Kasumovic, Deputy Finance Minister, told Balkan Insight.
 
“No one can receive their salary until the budget is valid,” Kasumovic said, “Not even members of the Presidency.”
 
Damir Becirovic, advisor to Zeljko Komsic, head of the State Presidency, confirmed that that no one employed by that institution had received a salary for January.  
 
“I can confirm that no one in the Presidency got a salary,” Becirevic said, adding that there was no reason why they should be an exception.
 
As a consequence of Bosnia's prolonged political crisis, the main parliamentary parties have failed to agree on state budgets either for 2011 or for 2012.
 
State institutions last year functioned on temporary financing. But since the parties could not agree on a 2012 budget, either, the basis for the another year of temporary financing was until recently missing.
 
At the end of last year, officials rushed to formally adopt a 2011 budget so as to have a basis on which to draw up temporary financing measures for 2012.  
 
But Komsic, head of the three-member State Presidency, which is in charge of proposing the budget, sent a budget proposal signed only by himself.
 
The State Parliament adopted the draft on December 31, but asked for the formal document to be delivered again with all three signatures on it. That has not yet happened.
 
The Finance Ministry insists that only when the budget is officially signed by all the three members of the Presidency can it be published in the Official Gazette, after which payments from the treasury can resume.  
 
State salaries are not the only looming financial problem for Bosnia. Another is repayment of loans owed to a variety of foreign creditors, including the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  
 
Bosnia's total foreign debt is around 3 billion euro of which the country must repay about 25 million euro in 2012.