The Fourth Session of Fiscal Council Held

Following a few days long visit of a delegation of the International Monetary Fund to Bosnia and Herzegovina and its meetings in the Entity and State Finance Ministries, the fourth session of the Fiscal Council of BIH was held, under chairing of Dr Denis Zvizdić, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of BIH, where a Letter of Intent was agreed for a new, extended, EFF Arrangement with the IMF. The Fiscal Council session was attended by Head of IMF Mission in BIH Nadeem Ilahi. 

The meeting considered elements of the Letter of Intent as to a new, extended, arrangement, and an agreement was reached with the IMF Delegation, subject to consideration and eventually endorsement by the Management and Executive Board, expected this July, which includes an economic programme worth about EUR 550 million.

All-level authorities underlined their proposals focused to leverage entrepreneurs and economic growth. In regard to that, the economic programme supported within EFF entails three major aims, namely, improvement of business environment, private sector job creation, and enhancing increasing economic growth capacities, in addition to decrease of public debt by way of a gradual fiscal consolidation with simultaneous streamlining of administrative apparatus and improvement of public spending quality, as well as maintenance of financial sector stability and recovering of credit growth.

They agreed that the new IMF arrangement would bring about the financial stability to all-level authorities in BIH and that the whole arrangement needs to be followed by reforms, i.e. it should rather have a backing role to the Reform Agenda implementation. The extended arrangement will serve s a catalyst in mobilisation of international financial assistance, as both the European Union and World Bank plan to provide additional financial resources for the reform implementation activities.

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